Commentary on Animated Oscar Shorts nominated for 2014

Spoiler Alert: The article below may contain information that may reveal clues about the shorts that may spoil your first viewing!

First of all, I have to be thankful to my friend who invited me to watch these animated shorts in Portland, Oregon. I did not know about the existence of these shorts till he told me about the films last year. If you want to see the full list of awards given for the Oscars, you can do so at the official website (http://oscar.go.com/nominees).

These animated shorts are usually not released at the theater like most full length feature films. We were lucky to get to watch these at the Living Room Theaters in downtown Portland, OR. You can watch them through Thursday, 06 Feb 2014 at Living Room Theaters. They are also being shown at Hollywood Theatre. In the age of the internet, some of them are also available for viewing and purchase through other avenues like Netflix, Itunes, Amazon Video


The shorts are produced by countries in the industrialized well-off first world- which goes to show that film-making, even an animated short is an expensive venture. We were discussing after the movie how for even a small 5 minute short film, the credits contained more than a hundred people. It shows that whereas something like a book or a piece of art can be produced by a single person, a film takes a lot of resources and thus cannot easily be produced by someone in a poor country with limited resources. There are many places in the world that have exquisite murals- but there is no way for an artist from a marginalized place to produce a short.

Perhaps in the future, computers will help level the playing field and allow us to hear stories from far-away places. In the same way that I feel happy that we went to see the Oscar nominated animated shorts, which is something that not a lot of people see, perhaps we should be also be mindful of things that we do not get to see on the big screen for reasons of economics and politics. Perhaps, we should all engage in a mental exercise of creating an animated short when we see a work of art that moves us.

A mural from Los Baños, Ecuador, 2012. There are tons of beautiful murals in Ecuador and other places in the world. What would a short produced by this artist look like?

The movies being considered for the Oscar awards in the category Animated Short Film for the year 2014 are

Feral (USA)
Daniel Sousa and Dan Golden

The animated  minimalist art work for this film deals with the subject of a "feral" kid rescued by a hunter in the woods, and the eventual failure of the kid to be integrated into "civil" society, and his escape back to the woods after not being able to "fit" into society. It is a simple story that asks questions about what we consider to be civilization, about the prevalence of bullying in USA and how the Procrustes story continues to play out in our daily lives. As a person of colour, it was interesting for me to note the subtle way in which a US American town in the days when horses were used for transport was portrayed as all white. It asks questions about the reality of the acceptance of rugged individualism in US American society in the past and the current era, where even children can be mean and bully someone seen as different.

Get a Horse! (USA)
Lauren MacMullan and Dorothy McKim

Technically this Disney production is a meta-narrative of cartoons which does interesting twists of questioning what is shown on film, and makes one question reality with characters jumping in and out of the screen onto a vaudeville stage- layering time in an interesting manner and making the familiar seem unfamiliar.

Thematically, it was revolting for me to see human relations portrayed in a crude manner through the eyes of a male-dominated perspective. Mickey and Minnie mouse are of the same size, yet as a female character Minnie needs the protection of a male, Mickey, in order to be saved from the clutches of a violent male villain. It perpetuates the myth of male-dominance and the idea that a female needs a male father figure in order to ensure her safety in a world where men are not able to control their lust. It also shows that the only thing that works in the world is violence, and the only way to counter it is by violence.

Mr. Hublot (France)
Laurent Witz and Alexandre Espigares

Thematically, this was the visually most interesting film of the bunch with hints of steam-punk. I liked the virtual world dreamed up the creators, and their portrayal was a commentary on how life in the current era has become mechanical and sans emotion.

I wonder if the name "Hublot" in any way refers to "Monsieur Hulot" a character created by Jacques Tati to show the idiocies of life in the current era. Perhaps, there is some pun in the French language that links this connection. The characters of Hublot and Hulot are not too dissimilar; they are an ill-fit in the "modern" world that they live in. I loved the many touches to detail- some of which I have not been able to decode- like the counter on the forehead of all the characters. Does the counter refer to a clock, blood pressure, some vital sign of the body, a counter of things done in the day? Perhaps it is an open question asked by the creators to make us question gadgets that we use in our daily like clocks and counters, which is not needed by co-domesticated animals like dogs. For me the film raises the question, if we should be investing in relationships, even relationships with non-humans like dogs in order to come in touch with our inner human in a soul-less mechanical world.

Possessions (Japan)
Shuhei Morita

This film explores the concept of what happens to objects when they get old- do we simply discard them or can they be fixed and made anew? It does so by transporting us in a time-capsule to a time in Japan when presumably there were repairmen who used to roam around the countryside fixing things. All they had with them was a wooden box, the size of a large shoe-box carried on a bamboo pole- a magical box which opens to reveal all sorts of tools arranged elegantly in small drawers inside the box. The box itself had hinges to be able to function as a work-stand to allow the easy access of all the tools. The tool kit contained tools for repairing any number of household objects like paper, glue and gilding knives to repair umbrellas, or a simple needle to repair torn cloth.

Mattress repairmen in India: From Ranchi, India- 2003

 I wondered about similar people in the Indian sub-continent and other places in the world. It made me think about people who come by in India to re-fluff old mattresses and people who come by on bicycles to sharpen knives. How does their livelihood get affected if we all buy use and throw mattresses like we do in the USA now? Are there people like the repairman in Japan today? Why not?

Room on the Broom (UK)
Max Lang and Jan Lachauer

Based on a children's book, this book explores the idea of how much are we willing to accommodate a stranger and shows off the English penchant for rhyming words (room/broom, be/me, cat/hat/plait). It is a story of a witch with a broom who has a cat, and how other animals, a dog, a frog and a bird join her family when they help her find things that she has lost. It shows us that as individuals our contribution to a cause may be small, but when we unite we can fight off a big danger (in the story symbolically represented by a dragon).


Links:-

Oscar Website containing list of nominations: http://oscar.go.com/nominees

Living Room Theaters: http://pdx.livingroomtheaters.com/

Hollywood Theatre: http://hollywoodtheatre.org/

Procrustes Legend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Procrustes