This year’s Oscar-nominated animated short — a grim tale about war, assault, trauma, identity, and regret — finds the filmmakers telling a heart-wrenching but not exploitative or gratuitous story about trauma. It asks the question: What tools can we use to do this?
An innovative technique used by directors Jared and Jerusha Hess in Ninety-Five Senses is the narrative structure. A prisoner (voiced by Tim Blake Nelson) eats his last meal, anecdotally reflecting on his feelings and telling vignettes from his life. The life that was (and could have been). Each sensation is depicted in different styles by different artists, creating something like an anthology of his 13 minutes of life. But that makes this modest film feel a bit disjointed and lacking the build-up to make it satisfying. A moving conclusion.
Iranian director Yeganeh Moghaddam chose the seven-minute film Our Uniform, which depicts her school uniform and the restrictive fashion rules of her culture that inform her understanding of gender and autonomy. Packed with concise thoughts on how it was shaped. Like “Nine Five Senses,” the story of “Our Uniforms” is simple and direct, but the latter shows the group’s most creative animation concepts. The illustrations move against a backdrop of different fabrics, with characters running around buttons and along seams.
“Pachyderme,” a quiet but harrowing French short directed by Stéphanie Clément, tells of a young girl’s summer with her grandparents in the countryside. Robust Art Her style (each shot is beautifully shaded, painterly) and subdued narration create a Grimm fairy tale feel, with seemingly innocuous details showing how menace lies beneath. I am.
The unspeakable monster of “Pachyderme” mirrors the ever-changing monster of director Tal Cantor’s breathtaking “Letter to the Pig.” In this film, a Holocaust survivor tells a classroom of young students about the pig that saved his life. While the film doesn’t detail the atrocities of war, it paints an equally chilling picture through sharp visual metaphors. The animation shifts from bare-bones black and white line drawings to fleshy watercolor pinks and 3D realism, creating a sophisticated and heartbreaking account of the tragedy.
Alongside these remarkable war stories, Dave Mullins’ The War is Over! Inspired by the music of John and Yoko,” the words warm my heart. In another World War I, soldiers from both sides find a way to connect. Death by telegraph and the idealistic cries of John Lennon and Yoko Ono make this the least memorable of a strong category of films depicting the dark side of humanity. maya phillips