More often than not, the winner of the Best Animated Short Film category seems like a foregone conclusion. With such major Hollywood players as Pixar, Disney, and Blue Sky in the mix, it can be hard for the up-and-coming animator to compete for the prize. But this year is different. There’s no big animation studio in the mix, which should make for an interesting Oscar race. In addition, there are a number of worthy nominees in the race, so one hopes quality will be the primary factor in voters’ decisions.
At a time when Hollywood animated features all seem to boast a similar visual aesthetic — largely a modified CGI take on the classic Disney style — it’s good to see diversity in this year’s crop of Oscar-nominated shorts. Consider the Russian entry, My Love, animated in a painterly style with plenty of swirling brushstrokes. This style is a good match for its classically-bound story, set in czarist Russia and inspired by Turgenev. My Love, directed by Alexander Petrov, is a poignant evocation of first love, and a rich and rewarding film.
The film with the broadest mainstream appeal is Josh Raskin’s I Met the Walrus, which also boasts the best backstory of
the five nominees. In 1969, fourteen-year-old Jerry Levitan snuck into John Lennon’s hotel room and persuaded him to do a short interview, and almost four decades later Levitan and Raskin have turned that interview into a film. If only the film itself were so interesting — Raskin’s style is shallow and uninspired, literalizing Lennon’s remarks by matching them with sub-Gilliam visual equivalents. As far as films like this go, it pales in comparison with Chris Landreth’s 2004 Oscar-winner Ryan, which was similarly inspired by an interview but made for compelling cinema with its expressive style and bittersweet tone. By comparison, I Met the Walrus is a stunt.
Also taking its cue from a dearly departed musical master is Suzie Templeton and Hugh Welchman’s Peter and the Wolf, a new take on Prokofiev’s classic. One of three stop-motion films in competition this year, the film follows Peter and his animal friends into the forest where of course they meet a wolf. The story is nothing new, but the animation is impressive. I especially liked the backgrounds, full of gnarly trees and dark corners, but the characters were fun as well, my favorite being a fat, mean cat who looked suspiciously like Orson Welles as Falstaff.
I was somewhat more mixed on the French stop-motion nominee, Même les Pigeons Vont Au Paradis (Even Pigeons Go to Heaven). Samuel Tourneux and Simon Vanesse’s short tells the story of a priest who tries to convince an old miser to buy a machine that will guarantee him entry into heaven. The animation is good-looking, but the filmmaking isn’t particularly inspired, and the pacing feels rushed. In the end, Pigeons is more or less a one-joke movie, not up to the high standard set by some of the other nominees.
Finally, the third stop-motion entry and the best of this year’s nominees is Madame Tutli-Putli, which follows the titular mousy heroine as she experiences a number of strange events on a bizarre night train. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski’s film is light on story, but overflowing with style. In addition, Madame Tutli-Putli is a masterpiece of tone, perfectly capturing the forlorn feel of an overcrowded train car, as well as moments of humor, suspense, and visual poetry. Madame Tutli-Putli is perhaps too obscure for the Academy voters — pessimist that I am, I anticipate that they might go for I Met the Walrus or Even Pigeons Go to Heaven. But it’s a wonder, and I expect that it’ll still be watched long after the other films have been forgotten.
