Short Stuff: The 2015 Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts

So, by the time I finish writing this, the award will probably have been awarded. That's just how the schedule worked out here this year, but so what? Considering the material they cover, and how little other exposure they get, it's well worth being reminded that these short films exist, and that receiving these nominations gives them a bit more of a chance to be seen.

Quick links:
"Body Team 12"
"A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness"
"Last Day of Freedom"
"Chau, Beyond the Lines"
"Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah"

"Body Team 12"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

America seemed to lose its collective mind over Ebola a year or two ago, and then, when it didn't prove to be the national disaster people thought. It's a real, ongoing issue in Liberia, though, and "Body Team 12" is a fine, ground-level look at the people who do the final work of collecting the bodies of the dead.

Director David Darg mostly follows Garmai Sumo, a single mother working for the Red Cross and the only woman on her Monrovia-based team. She's a personable narrator, empathetic but business-like when discussing the sobering work the team does and how it clashes with the need of the victims' families to grieve, but lively away from the job, giving the audience implicit hope that though this is a crisis, it's a surmountable one. Darg is careful to make sure this comes from Sumo naturally and without exaggeration, just as he is not particularly keen to point out just how underfunded and improvised this group is, though it's hard to miss that they're carrying bodies away in pickup tricks and re-using things that first-world countries would consider disposable even if nobody specifically mentions it.

"Body Team 12" is the shortest of the nominated films, thirteen minutes while the others all male use of close to the full forty that the category allows. That is a badge Darg should wear with honor, as his film is streamlined while still being informative, and doesn't try to force a narrative that distorts what he is trying to say. More easily-digested sort documentaries with clarity would be a welcome trend.

"A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness"

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

It's been some time since a documentary made me seethe with anger the way "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" did. I knew enough about the subject matter to be sure that anger was coming - it tells the story of Saba Qaiser, a 19-year-old woman who nearly fell victim to one of the over 1,000 "honor killings" that happen in Pakistan annually but managed to survive multiple bullet wounds (including one to the face) and being thrown in the river - but the kicker, that the community would pressure her to forgive the father and uncle who did it, was where the real rage showed up.

Showing something awful doesn't always provoke rage and rage itself isn't enough for a movie to be considered great, even in the documentary category, but director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a great storyteller. From the very start, when Saba describes only meeting her husband through a few exchanged letters, she regularly builds her film in a way that gives those not familiar with Pakistani culture chances to be surprised and thus more engaged in learning about it but doesn't require that reaction to work. She (and editor Geof Bartz) also display a skill that is often crucial to making a good documentary but which is all too often unappreciated - they are able to work around material that they don't have, from the capture of Saba's attackers to what happens in a closed courtroom. It's good stuff to start with, but Obaid-Chinoyputs it together near-perfectly.

Much of what Obaid-Chinoy is able to do with this story would be for naught without Saba herself, of course, and she's a strong anchor for the film even when her injuries may make the audience want to look away. She's not the film's only compelling voice - the supportive detective and pro bono lawyer are important for showing that there is a solid cadre of people in Pakistan who want change, which re-frames the narrative somewhat - but her level presence on screen reminds the audience of what she went through to survive that night without framing her as strictly a victim or activist. It makes the latter moments perhaps less rawly emotional than they could be had Obaid-Chinoy taken a more strident tack - it's more deflating than crushing when things start lining up against her quest for justice - but it also allows the film to display the state of the struggle: Difficult, with a lot stacked against it, but hopefully moving in the right direction.

"Last Day of Freedom"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

It's interesting that the nominations and the choices made in assembling the nominees as a package put "A Girl in the River" right next to "Last Day of Freedom" - the righteous anger of the first serve as a direct contrast to the other's pleas for mercy and understanding. Dig a little and there is some common ground, though mainly in the broadest terms. This one, after all, tells a different story from a different direction, as narrator Bill Babbitt recounts the life of his brother Manny, teaching the gaps in and our of Manny's control that would eventually lead to his execution for murder.

"Animated documentary" sounds like an oxymoron, but filmmakers Dee Hibbert-Jones & Nomi Talisman are able to use it to get at the truth of the story Bill tells in ways traditional documentaries can't: They can show events for which no footage exists (or emphasize elements that were not central to what images there may be), or revisit locations as they were as opposed to add they are now. It allows them to build the entire half-hour film around Bill's monologue without it feeling static - not only is the style they use a bit jumpy, but his lines can become something else without a cut or a less natural-seeming visual effect. And while the fact that the Babbitts are black is at times important, it never becomes their first trait as it so often does in contemporary stories of crime and punishment, helping to give the other factors more weight.

The animation is the most obvious thing that sets this sort apart, but it would do the film a disservice to treat it as the only tool Talisman & Hibbert-Jones have in their arsenal. The animation makes it a little more difficult to see how much of Bill's story just came out in a stream of consciousness and how much was prompted in an interview and later pieced together through editing, but the the of them do well to allow a little rambling - that's how memory works - but always get back to the main thread. They do an excellent job of relating their tale's events clearly enough to reach certain conclusions, but leaving room for a little equivocation and uncertainty. Perhaps most impressively, the filmmakers wind up moving in the opposite direction as many documentarians - though it initially seems like Bill is going to be talking about the death penalty, their film soon grows into a story of multiple connected issues, but of individual people more than anything else.

"Chau, Beyond the Lines" (aka "War Within the Walls")

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

In another interesting juxtaposition (if you see what was broken up into two programs here back-to-back), both that short and "Chau, Beyond the Lines" deal with the fallout of the Vietnam War. Filmmaker Courtney March's subject initially doesn't appear to belong in Ho Chi Minh City's Lang Hao Binh Agent Orange Care Center where he has lived practically since infancy, as a close-up shows a good-looking teenager's face before other shots reveal his weak, skeletal limbs and knobby knees, and how he drags his right leg when walking in something of a crouched position. He dreams of being an artist and fashion designer, but always falls behind in an annual drawing competition at the War Remnants Museum because he is so weak physically.

Chau is, in fact, in better shape than many at the "camp", and the first act of the film seldom let's the audience forget this - it can't, as it would be difficult to frame a shot there that didn't include a child with missing limbs or an unnerving facial deformity. That Marsh will often allow the camera to linger on them or follow the activity is a shallow thing to complain about, as the world in general could probably stand more reminders of how the effects of these war crimes persist into the present, but it's not always good for the film. It focuses on the circumstances that created Chau's challenges, but not on him, most tellingly when mention is made of him having friction with the nurses but not much sign of what that means on-screen.

And while Marsh perhaps never gives a complete picture of Chau, she keeps returning to him - adding up the gaps mentioned in the film gives something like five or six years - and in that time, something resembling a story develops. It's a thin one, in some ways, but admirably focused; Marsh knew what she was driving for when cutting it, and she builds toward a modest but satisfying conclusion with relatively little bombast. The appealing characterization Chau had from the start solidifies as the audience watches him navigate the world outside the camp, and while there is sometimes a sense that the film puts too upbeat a face on something horrific, its version of Chau's story is nevertheless satisfying.

"Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

That sort of focus is something that "Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah" could perhaps have used more of. It feels like a DVD extra, but a making-of documentary for Shoah, a ten-hour film that was in production and the editing room for twelve years, needs something larger than a film which qualifies as a short subject, especially if it has vague ideas about covering the director as well. This needs to be a feature or home in on some specific aspect of its subject.

When director Adam Benzine does concentrate on one aspect - how he got and filed interviews with various subjects, from a barber who survived the camps to a former Nazi - the film does come alive. Lanzmann may be elderly, but he is still sharp, explaining in precise detail why he made certain decisions or recalling incidents that placed him in danger. Those are more compelling moments than when he falls into the art-house French filmmaker pattern of broadly philosophical pronouncements, or when other interviewees like Max Ophuls make comments about Lanzmann having a difficult personality that are not explored at all. When Benzine has to jump around, he has a hard time going into any sort of depth.

Admittedly, my own interest in this particular film is hurt by never having seen Shoah; more than any of the other nominees, this one is almost certainly more illuminating with greater context, and perhaps ill-served by being presented alongside for other films aiming to communicate with a broad audience. It's no crime to target a relatively specific audience if the filmmaker serves them well, but I suspect that anybody who knows Shoah will enough to be interested in this short might prefer something with the room to go into greater depth.

Writing this a few days after the prize had actually been awarded to "A Girl in the River" is a bit unusual and may seem pointless to some, given how articles like this are often presented in terms of handicapping the awards race as much as considering the films themselves. It's actually somewhat freeing to do so, which isn't terribly surprising, reminding one of what Louis CK said when introducing the awards: More than anything else in the Oscars, being highlighted by a win or even a nomination in this category can potentially change someone's life, both for the filmmaker and subject, and they're works that come from a place of incredible passion (nobody is getting rich by following a disabled kids in Ho Chi Minh City for six years!). So, find this package of films wherever you can and give them a look, even if it won't help your Oscar pool at this late date.

Fantasia Day Three: Arch Angels, 200 Pounds Beauty, Dasepo Naughty Girls, The Banquet, The Rug Cop and zzzzzzzzzz..

Updated yesterday's post with Flight of the Living Dead.

Nothing but movies yesterday, and today looks similar. I kind of ran out of gas at around ten o'clock last night, so I dozed off a bit during The Rug Cop and a lot during Hell's Ground. It's a shame, because The Rug Cop was pretty funny. Hell's Ground I didn't quite enjoy so much; it seemed to go on forever even while I was drifting in and out of sleep, and it seemed like every time I woke up, the same kids were still in the car, one was still bleeding, and I had no idea what they were fighting. It probably didn't help that they showed a twenty minute montage of how goofy Pakistani exploitation has been in the past beforehand; I was not in a good spot for having my endurance tested.

If you're in Montreal today, I wouldn't talk you out of 200 Pounds Beauty or Dasepo Naughty Girls, though I might suggest that there's better ways to spend your time than Viva. My plan is Wolfhound, War of Flowers, Ten Nights of Dreams, The Show Must Go On and Spiral.

Arch Angels (Waru Mikearu)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Teen and tween girls in Japan get this, and in America they get Bratz. Something is just not fair.

All you pervs who reached this page by searching for "Japanese Catholic Schoolgirls" may leave now; this almost lighter-than air trifle isn't really for you. The young girls it's made for should get a kick out of it, though - it's a fun, upbeat little fantasy, equal parts Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, and Nancy Drew.

As with many such tales, it starts with a dead parent, in this case the mother of Fumio Shijo (Juri Ueno). This leads her to her wealthy brother Kazuomi (Yusuke Iseya), whom she didn't know existed before. "The Prince", as she calls him, enrolls her in St. Michael's Academy, a Catholic girls' school on a sort-of remote island (she takes the train over what appears to be a twenty-mile-long bridge every day). The formal students make her feel out of place, but she winds up finding a couple other girls who would rather sneak out to snack on chicken ramen than stay in the stuffy confines of the school all day: Class President Yuzuko Sarashina (Airi Taira) is faking the upper class thing herself, as her parents are new millionaires, while star athlete Kazune Saiki (Megumi Seki) associates it with her hunky tutor Shunsuke (Toshinobu Matsuo), who lets her eat it between bonks on the head while studying. They're hanging around together when a strange explosion gives them superpowers - which could come in useful, what with the recent series of teenaged asian girls from wealthy families being kidnapped.

The superpowers and the kidnappings are basically an excuse to give the movie a big action finale, while the rest is occupied with girl stuff - secret clubs, preparing for a big party/school festival, and Fumio fretting about how she really doesn't seem to fit into her brother's world. There is, of course, a potential suitor for Kazuomi with visions of sending Fumio off to Switzerland, but it's indicative of how good-natured Fumio and the film in general are that she rapidly embraces the idea, wanting to please this potential sister, feeling that she's screwed up her brother's life and that it is wrong for her to expect him to make changes to accommodate her.

Full review at EFC.
200 Pounds Beauty (Minyeo-neun Geoerowo)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

The thing about 200 Pounds Beauty is that there's no satisfying way to end it. The premise (fat girl becomes a beauty through extensive surgery) leads to the film either presenting radical, dangerous cosmetic surgery as a viable course of action, ending in tears, or trying to have things both ways. It's inevitable. So it's a real testament to Kim Ah-jung's performance that we spend the film hoping it will find some way to pull it off.

Ms. Kim plays Kan Han-na, an overweight, unattractive woman who nevertheless has a lovely voice. It serves her well both as a phone-sex operator and as the real singer behind pop tart Ammy (who's pretty and can dance, but can't carry a tune at all). Han-na has a crush on Ammy's manager Sang-jun (Ju Jin-mo), and he seems to like her... And then Han-na overhears them talking about her. Crushed, she goes to one of her phone-sex regulars, a plastic surgeon, and demands he change everything. He reluctantly agrees, and after a year of surgery and recovery, Han-na re-emerges at half her original weight, with a new face, new boobs, etc. Hearing that Ammy's second album has been delayed (while Sang-jun and Ammy tried to find Han-na), she auditions to be Ammy's replacement under another name. "Jenny" gets the gig, and the guy, but pretending to be someone else creates its own problems.

Kim Ah-jung is the reason to see this movie; she brings the same sort of innocent, kind of dorky charm to Han-na at both sizes, always at least a bit out of step with what people expect from someone who looks like she does. She always hits the right note to get the audience to believe in and like Han-na, whether it's squealing upon having her bandages cut off that she even cries pretty now, telling her doctor that the dangers of the surgery don't matter because she feels like she's already died, appearing genuinely tortured that she has to pretend not to know her senile father or risk exposing her deception, or imitating glamor poses as she walks. She's got great comic chops and a pretty darn good voice for the singing scenes; her face is expressive enough for silent comedy. She never loses sight of the fact that we're supposed to like Han-na, even when she's screwing up or not at her best.

Full review at EFC.

Dasepo Naughty Girls (Dasepo Sonyo)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Dasepo Naughty Girls is based on an internet comic strip, and it's got that kind of manic energy: It starts out with a whole bunch of quick, raunchy gags that aren't much more than crude but don't really need to be. By the end, though, it's started to pull its punches a little, and stitched together more story than it really needs.

"No Use High" is a multi-religious high school whose students probably have names, but we don't hear them much. Poverty Girl (Kim Ok-bin) carries her poverty around on her back, and her attempts to sell her virtue for money tend to go bizarrely awry. She's got a huge crush on Swiss exchange student Anthony (Park Jin-woo), who meanwhile has fallen hard for Two Eyes (Lee Eun-seong), the beautiful sister of outcast Cyclops (Lee Kyeon). Only issue: She's actually a boy. Meanwhile, Anthony's friends are launching an investigation into why Class Monitor Girl (Park Hye-won) and Student Vice President Girl (Nam Oh-jeong) are suddenly more interested in studying and getting into college than putting out after trips to the principal's office.

Dasepo has a lot of the same feel as American Pie in how it's superficially very crude while at the same time celebrating its characters' youthful innocence. Sure, the movie opens with a bit where a substitute announces that their English teacher won't be coming in because he's being treated for syphilis. Oh, and Class Monitor Girl, you should get checked to. Which leads to another student saying he has to leave class early to visit the doctor. And then another, and so on until poor Cyclops is sitting there all alone. As much as the movie makes jokes about casual promiscuity, it doesn't go in much for actual titillation: The scene where Poverty Girl becomes an internet sensation is almost ridiculous in its tameness - it feels like more than it is because it's one of the only times we see her not weighed down by her mother's financial problems and ill health.

Full review on EFC.

The Banquet (Ye Yan)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Even in an age where period martial-arts epics have been made by the likes of Ang Lee, Kaige Chen, and Zhang Yimou, The Banquet stands out as high-gloss. Much of the behind-the-scenes crew worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and they've built the largest set ever used for a Chinese film. Executive producer Yuen Woo-ping handles fight choreography, and there are five featured soloists and singers on Tan Dun's score. Director Feng Xiaogang is going all out.

Such opulence demands a worthy story, and writers Qiu Gangjian and Sheng Heyu opt to transplant Hamlet to a particularly tubulent period of Chinese history. Although the basics remain the same - Emperor Li (You Ge) has seized his brother's throne and married his queen, Crown Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu) tries to expose his uncle's evil by gauging his reaction to a play that recreates the murder, Li sends Wu Luan into an exile from which he is not to return, and then final, bloody resolution at a banquet - several intriguing changes have been made. Gone are the ghost of the prince's father, his faithful friend Horatio, and the less faithful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Where Queen Gertrude was a vaguely complicit figure in Shakespeare's plan, Zhang Ziyi's Empress Wan is at the center of everything, and having her be the prince's young stepmother makes for a big change in the relationship.

And it's a good one. Although it borders on sacrelige to suggest that Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular can be improved upon, there aren't many changes I'd want taken back. Wu Luan's fascination with actors and acrobats is now an integral part of his character - he has chosen to spend his time studying the arts, and it's made some think he is not cut out to be Emperor. Qing (Xun Zhou), the Ophelia character, is just as hopelessly linked to the prince, but it feels more like true love, at least from her end; she's strong and noble enough to do more than drown heartbroken offstage. Oddly, she's a stronger character in part because instead of feeling like she's there as an obligatory love interest until her death motivates Laertes, there's a little more depth to her relationship with Wu Luan because of Wan's presense.

Full review at EFC.

The Rug Cop (Zura Deka)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in the D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

This would be a kick-ass pilot for a TV series, and nails the 70s/80s cop show clichés it spoofs with frequent hilarity. I may have to try and get a screener so I can see the whole thing and post a full review.