Film Review: Oscar Nominated Short Films & The 22nd Animation Show of Shows

Shorts—A Long Look

Oscar nominated short docs & Animation Show of Shows

By Marc Glassman

With the Oscars coming up in less than a month, it’s the perfect time for nominated films to be shown in theatres and streaming services. One of the great things about the Academy Awards is that it acknowledges innovative new shorts in three categories: documentary, live action and animation. TIFF Bell Lightbox will be showing all of the films this week and the Hot Docs cinema will be screening the doc shorts next weekend. So let’s look at: 

The Oscar nominated documentary shorts 

How Do You Measure a Year? – Jay Rosenblatt, USA, 29 min.

The Elephant Whisperers – Kartiki Gonsalves and Guneet Monga, India, 40 min.

Stranger at the Gate – Joshua Seftel and Conall Jones, USA, 29 min.

Haulout – Evgenia Arbugaeva and Maxim Arbugaev, UK, 25 min.

The Martha Mitchell Effect – Anne Alvergue and Beth Levison, USA, 40 min.

How Do You Measure a Year? Is the kind of doc that only a filmmaker would make. Jay Rosenblatt, whose been making award-winning shorts since the 1980s, has been shooting his daughter Ella’s birthdays since she was two. Every year, he asks her probing questions about who she is, what she loves, where her power lies, and what she wants to be as an adult. Happily for the film, Ella is articulate even as a baby; we like her as she grows up although—perhaps unfortunately—this very personal doc lacks any stunning revelations.

The Elephant Whisperers is the kind of sincere emotional doc that wins awards. Set in the jungles of India, it is a beautifully shot film about Billie and Bomman, an elderly indigenous duo, who take care of orphaned baby elephants. While nursing and mentoring two adorable elephants, the duo fall in love and marry. Genuinely sweet-natured, The Elephant Whisperers delights us, with moving scenes between people and elephants that will touch the heart. 

Stranger at the Gate is a bit of a cheat. You are set up to think that Mac McKinney, a US military veteran, is a serial killer, about to commit atrocities. Instead, what we get is the true story of a former American redneck, who moves from hatred towards Muslims to embracing their culture. Although this is a positive film, it is manipulative in a way that doesn’t seem deserving of an Oscar nomination.

Haulout is a gorgeously shot ethnographic film set in the desolate Siberian Arctic. The rocky northern island is seemingly without life apart from Maxim, a Russian scientist, who is occupying one decrepit cabin. Then, one morning, Maxim wakes up and is unfazed by what he sees. Overnight, tens of thousands of walruses have landed on the island. Maxim is stuck in his cabin, surrounded by walruses for over a week until one day they move on. We find out that the poor creatures are used to living on ice floes while catching fish but the warm weather is forcing them to go from island to island. Maxim is there to record their activity and monitor their deaths, which amount to over 600. This is a brilliant film and my personal favourite of the nominees.

The Martha Mitchell Effect tells the bizarre story of the wife of Richard Nixon’s Attorney General, who was a key figure in the Watergate scandal. She realized that her husband John Mitchell and Nixon had been involved in the break-in to Democratic election campaign offices in the Watergate complex because one of the men arrested had been her daughter’s bodyguard. Mitchell alerted members of the press about her suspicions, which increased media activity around Watergate. The Republicans tried to denigrate her, calling her crazy and alcoholic, but Mitchell persisted and was vindicated when Nixon eventually resigned. The doc tells a complicated political story quite well, focusing on the misogyny against Mitchell. 

There’s another and quite delightful package of shorts showing this week at the Carlton, the 

22nd Animation Show of Shows

10 animated short films presented in order of appearance :

• Beyond Noh — Patrick Smith/Kaori Ishida (U.S./Japan) 
• Empty Places — Geoffroy de Crecy (France) 
• Beseder (Good and Better) — Gil Alkabetz (Germany) 
• Zoizoglyphe — Jeanne Apergis (France) 
• Rain (Deszcz) — Piotr Milczarek (Poland) 
• Average Happiness — Maja Gehrig (Switzerland) 
• Aurora — Jo Meuris (U.S.)
• Yes-People — Gísli Darri Halldórsson (Iceland) 
• Ties — Dina Velikovskaya (Germany/Russia) 
• The Man Who Planted Trees — Frédéric Back (Canada)

The Animation Show of Shows is a work of passionate commitment by veteran producer and writer Ron Diamond. Full confession here: I’ve been friendly with Ron for many years and his love for animation and animators is infectious. Not everything in this current roster is of absolute top quality but all are worth watching, and it’s great to see that so many animation shorts are still being produced internationally. 

The Show of Shows concentrates on poetic animation pieces, which juxtapose music and grand ideas with stunning visuals. They’re less about plot or dialogue and more about abstract thoughts and imaginings. In Empty Places, accompanied by the Moonlight Sonata, we see a modern world, filled with luggage in carousels and elevator doors opening and closing but with no people to use them. Is it COVID film? We don’t know. The startling Beyond Noh is a bravura montage of masks from Africa, Asia and the Americas, as well as the ones used by Guy Fawkes and the Simpsons.

The Show of Shows is capped off by a 4K restoration of the Oscar winning short The Man Who Planted Trees, a true Canadian classic. Gorgeously drawn and animated by Quebec’s Frederic Back, the film features the expressive narrative voice of Christopher Plummer telling the Jean Giono fable of a shepherd who dedicates his life to replenish the forests in his native Provence. 

And that’s where I’m sending you these reviews, Adi and Jean, though I’m in a city, not in the countryside of Provence. A la prochaine de Nice!

Listen to Marc’s reviews in audio form below: