There
are ways that parents burden their children, such as decorating their home with
hipster Scandinavian furniture. It does not quite work as a unifying theme, but
generational debts and inheritances play an important role in at least some of
this year’s Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films, which open collectively today
in New York.
The
first simply will not fit into our artificial framework no matter how hard we
try to force it, but it is also the shortest and the slightest of the four
nominees provided to the media (again, Disney decided to do their own thing
with Patrick Osbourne’s Feast).
Marieke Blaauw, Joris Oprins & Job Roggeveen’s A Single Life is sort of a riff on the concept of Adam Sandler’s Click, with a 45 rpm record taking the
place of the remote control. It is amusing, but it is hardly a major work.
Daisy
Jacobs’ The Bigger Picture certainly
deals with serious issues, depicting the struggles of a faithful grown son to
care for his ailing mother, even while she persists in favoring his
irresponsible brother. Jacobs’ life-size, paper animated figures are undeniably
distinctive, but if this were a live action film, we would probably consider
the drama manipulative.
Torill
Kove’s Me and My Moulton is also a bit
sentimental, but in a sweetly nostalgic kind of way. The middle daughter of tragically
trendy but well-meaning architect parents must deal with their rather
unorthodox aesthetics, which seem strange to her more conventional friends. In
fact, Mouton is a rather sly satire
of hipster sensibilities as well as an endearing coming of age story. Kevin Dean’s
soul jazz trio soundtrack also makes it swing and groove.
Yet,
without question, the class of the field is Robert Kondo & Dice Tsutsumi’s The Dam Keeper (trailer here). When his father
passed away, young Pig assumed his position as the dam keeper, maintaining the
windmill that prevents as mass of toxic clouds from overrunning the village.
Yet, he is still just a boy, who continues to attend school, where he is often
mocked and bullied. One day, a young Fox transfers to his class and the rest of
the animal students are quite taken with her (she is a fox, after all).
However, she has an artist’s sensitivity, so she soon befriends Pig.
Nevertheless, she presumably remains subject to the same peer pressures of
other students. When it appears Fox betrays Pig’s trust for the sake of
acceptance, the heartbroken dam keeper might just give up entirely, which would
have ominous implications for the ungrateful village.
Dam Keeper is a beautiful
fable, perfectly served by the stunning painted and hand-drawn animation, but
it also resonates on a very personal level. In both visual and narrative terms,
it is an extraordinary film. It is worth seeing the entire program just for it,
especially since it is the longest of the nominated films. Frankly, if it does
not win, the Academy will have some explaining to do.
This
year’s nominated short film animated package is augmented with several other
films of notable merit, including one selection of the 2015 Slamdance Film Festival. While it is not as graceful and sophisticated as Plympton’s previous
Slamdance selection, the feature length Cheatin’,
Footprints is a rather clever, postmodern channeling of Peter and the Wolf, rendered in a
suitably surreal style.
