Animated Shorts

I found myself in New Haven today with some time to kill, so I went to the Bow Tie Criterion, which was featuring a program of all of the short subject films that are nominated for Oscars this year (I wanted to see Waltz With Bashir, but the times didn't work out). They split the bill in twain, with animated in one program and live action in the other; it worked out that I saw the animated films.

They all had their charms, and I'm hard pressed to say which one I would vote for. The only one I had seen before was Pixar's Presto, directed by Doug Sweetland. It played before WALL-E this summer, so it's certainly the most viewed film of the quintet, by a factor of millions. It is typical Pixar, if not highly derivative of Bugs Bunny, especially a cartoon like "Long-Haired Hare," where Bugs took on the opera singer. This cartoon, though, is dialogue-free (which all five of the films are). A bunny who works for a magician is famished, and all he wants is his carrot. The magician goes on stage without feeding him, though, and the bunny gets his revenge, through use of a magic hat.

Another cartoon reminiscent of standard gag-based animation is Oktapodi, from France and directed by Emud Mokhberi and Thierry Marchand. It is just about two minutes long, and concerns an octopus who chases after his beloved after he (or she?) is taken away to the sushi bar. It's bright and colorful and packs a lot of action into two minutes, but it's not very substantial.

This Way Up is also gag-heavy, though in a very macabre sense. From England, and directed by Alan Smith and Adam Foulkes, it concerns two determined undertakers transporting a casket to a graveyard. They even end up defying Satan. The grim humor is amusing, and the overall look of the picture is appropriate, but again, nothing that will linger in the memory for a lifetime.

Lavatory Love Story is a Russian film, directed by Konstantin Bronzit . Done in line drawings, it's about a lonely woman who is an attendant in a men's room. A secret admirer starts leaving her flowers, and she tries to find out who it is. There are splashes of slapstick and it's very sweet. Not sure it's a winner, though.

The only film that is not a comedy might get my vote (if I had one). Though it's title, Le Maison en Petites Cubes, is French, it's director is Japanese, Kunio Kato. It's the most lovely to look at, a story about a world where the water level keeps rising (the polar ice caps melting, maybe?) and people keep building higher and higher levels on their domiciles to keep above water. We focus on one old man in particular, who wakes one morning to find his room is ankle-deep in water. He builds another level on top, and moves all his stuff up. While doing so, he drops his pipe, so he dons some scuba gear to retrieve it. While he descends into the depths, he goes back to all the levels he has built on the house over the years, each one now covered in water. Each level contains memories, of a wife, a daughter, and young love. The film has a lovely poignancy, and is visually stunning, with a kind of washed watercolor look. I think it will stick with me longer than the others.

Since those five films only took forty minutes total, the program added some other shorts that were "Highly Commended," including a Bill Plympton cartoon and a droll British cartoon about a troubled romance between a polar bear and a penguin. None of them were as good as the five nominees, though.