Oscar’s Live Action shorts offer 4 winners, 1 stinker
With one exception this year’s yield of Oscar-nominated live-action shorts is a bumper crop. They include subjects as wide-ranging as child labor in Asia, the proliferation of A.I., genocide and the harsh and unethical tactics exercised by U.S. immigration officials. Here’s my take on each:
A Lien (15m, U.S.A.): Give the writing-directing team of David Cutler-Kreutz and Sam Cutler-Kreutz credit for timeliness in telling the harrowing tale of a young, mixed-raced couple seeing their happy family ripped apart by U.S. immigration officers who’ve lured them into a trap. Starring Victoria Ratermanis as Sophia Gomez and William Martinez as her Central American husband, Oscar, the story, produced by Adam McKay, depicts the cruelty and unfairness of a broken immigration system that has neither heart nor conscience.
Grade: B+
Anuja (22m, India-U.S.A.): Child labor in India is the subject of writer-director Adam J. Graves’ fact-based story about an orphaned 9-year-old math whiz (Sajda Pathan) who must choose between the opportunity to attend an elite school or growing up in a factory, working alongside her older sister (Ananya Shanbhag). Graves does an excellent job of creating a level of drama and suspense that keeps you on edge right up to his film’s cliffhanger ending. Will Anuja choose school? Or, an impoverished future under the thumb of a ruthless factory boss played to perfection by Nagesh Bhonsle.
Grade: B+
I’m Not a Robot (22m, Netherlands-Belgium): We’ve all been driven mad by those CAPTCHA verification challenges in which we’re asked to select all the squares containing a car, bus, etc., to prove we’re human. Eventually, we’re cleared. But that’s not the case for Lara (Ellen Parren), a music producer who fails the test repeatedly despite always clicking on the correct boxes. Puzzled, she asks I.T. what’s going on. And she’s told she might be a robot. She thinks it’s a rude joke, but writer-director Victoria Warmerdam poses the question of whether Lara is indeed a robot. And what would Lara do if she is? No fair letting on, but you won’t want to miss the answers, even if the scenario fails to hold up to scrutiny.
Grade: B
The Last Ranger (28m, South Africa): I loved director Cindy Lee’s powerful tale advocating for the preservation of endangered African rhinos. But I never want to see it again, and neither should you if you love wild animals as much as me. The events depicted are fact-based and they are deeply disturbing, both for us and the ranger, Litha (Liyabona Mroqoza), willing to risk her life to protect the majestic animals. What ensues is something no little girl, like Litha’s young charge, Kushelwa (Avumile Qongqo), should ever witness. It’s shocking to us. More so for Kushelwa after learning who’s responsible.
Grade: A-
The Man Who Could Not Stay Silent (13m, Croatia-Bulgaria-Slovenia-France): Only marginally less upsetting is writer-director Nebojša Slijepčević’s recreation of 1993’s Štrpci massacre in which 18 Bosnians and one Croat were seized from a train by a paramilitary group and killed. Among the dozens of passengers, only one, Tomo Buzov (Dragan Micanovic), famously spoke up and resisted. Yes, he was the one Croat who died. Slijepčević doesn’t feel it necessary to show the subsequent murders, just Buzov taking a stand, leaving his fate unknown until the final credits. The film is good, but I couldn’t get past its lack of urgency, not to mention a host of cliches.
Grade: C+
