“Burrow” is this year’s entry in the Best Animated Shorts category from Disney/Pixar’s SparkShorts program. Considering I loved last year’s choice, “Kitbull,” I had high expectations for this one. “Burrow” concerns a little bunny rabbit moving into her first hole in the ground. As she discovers she has neighbors, with far more elaborate burrows, she begins to feel self-conscious about her humble dreams. Digging deeper into the ground, she discovers more neighbors and eventually ends up causing some trouble for everybody.
Simply put, “Burrow” is adorable. There’s so many cute little gags and details, as we briefly see the other critters living in this underground. Like the salamanders running a sauna or a pair of mice with their own discotheque. The jokes - like the reveal concerning a grumpy badger - come fast. The soft and fluffy character designs are appealing, with a lot of personality in each one. The hand-drawn animation has a likable sketchy quality to it. From another perspective, "Burrow" is also a cute metaphor for being out on your own for the first time and feeling overwhelmed by the options presented to you. It's really sweet how the little bunny never judged by her neighbors for her mistakes. She just immediately accepted into the family. I definitely loved this one. [8/10]
"Genius Loci" comes to us from French animator Adrien Marigeau, previously an animation director on several Cartoon Saloon movies. Reine's quiet time in her room is disrupted by her sister's infant child. Overwhelmed by the noise in the apartment, she slinks into the even more chaotic urban night. There, she encounters several unusual sights - three men fusing into a Minotaur, a woman bursting into flames, an apple that rings like a cellphone - before entering a church. She meets her friend Rosie there, who is playing a music on the organ. This is interrupted by more surreal visuals, before Reine turns into a dog and runs back home.
I'm not entirely sure I understood what "Genius Lodi" is about. Considering Reine's reaction to her sister's baby and her not-entirely-platonic interaction with Rosie, it seems to be a story about a young woman desperate to define herself but feeling constrained by the paths laid out around her. But "Genius Loci" is mostly a platform for some very interesting animation. The style constantly shifts - static black-and-white images, swirling colors, cubistic character designs, lots of squiggly lines - which makes me wonder if this isn't meant to be a fifteen minute through various abstract artforms. The images are often memorably surreal and surprising, like a hand becoming a crawling spider or ash from a cigarette turning into twinkling stars. If nothing else, it's all beautifully animated. [7/10]
Yes, Netflix has even invaded this category too. ”If Anything Happens I Love You” concerns a married couple who silently sit in their home. Their shadows on the wall communicate the feelings they can't bring themselves to express. Around the home, we see signs – a closed bedroom, a paint splotch on the outside wall, a child's shirt in the laundry – that someone is missing. A flashback ensues that shows the couple, during happier times, with a young daughter. And as they send the girl off to school, the same secret shadows begging her to stay, it becomes obvious to the viewer what happened to their child.
“If Anything Happens I Love You” is pretty sad, which is a real “no shit” statement. The device of having the couple's shadows act out the feelings they keep inside, the feelings they know will flood out uncontrollably if they speak them, is a meaningful device. The animation, largely in black-and-white and somewhat sketchy, is simple but effective. When the tragedy – which is heavily foreshadowed even before the pieces fall into place – is depicted in a way that hits the viewer harder. Just the image of a U.S. flag, the only splash of color in the film, makes a large statement. There is a glimmer of hope in the final moments, that people can push through grief without pushing away the people they love. The emotions here are a little too obvious – a musical choice half-way through is extremely distracting – but “If Anything Happens I Love You” still makes its point in a meaningful fashion. [7/10]
Here's another weird one, from filmmaker Erick Oh. (Who previously directed the television spin-off from "The Dam Keeper," an earlier Best Animated Short nominee that I loved.) The camera pans down a massive pyramid, full of many rooms and occupied by vaguely humanoid figures. At the sunlit summit, a gong rings and a religious ceremony seems to ensue. In the core of the pyramid, figures toil in a factory setting. At the darkened base, the creatures - now divided into black-and-white factions - war over a key dangling from the sky... Until they destroy each other. And the cycle then begins again, though a few things are different now and there's some suggestion that things will change more soon.
"Opera" may be best experienced on the theater screen. There's so much going on inside this massive pyramid, that it's hard to take it all in on my television screen. I spotted a recreation of the Last Supper in the center, some sort of medical experiments going on in one corner, and fruit being picked from a tree in another. While the amount of stuff happening is surely impressive - you could probably rewatch this repeatedly and find something new each time - I wasn't as impressed with what it obviously all means. The pyramid in "Opera" is an encapsulation of society, with the haves at the top and the lowly workers, the have-nots, at the bottom. They war over meaningless things and their religious rites are clearly hollow. The final sequence brings us up to today, where those at the peak grow ever fatter. It's not exactly a cutting edge observation and the fact that it's depicted so distantly, like germs watched under a microscope, makes it hard to be too invested. I applaud the effort put into this one but it didn't really work for me. [6/10]
Our final nominee comes from Iceland. It follows a group of six people living in an apartment building as they go about their daily lives. A guy goes to work while his miserable wife sits home and day-drinks. A teenager goes to school, plays video games at night, while his stay-at-home mom tutors a kid playing the recorder. An old man shovels snow outside while his fat wife sits inside and reads. Later that night, they have enthusiastic sex. Oh, by the way, they communicate and express all their feelings and thoughts with a single word: "Ja," the Icelandic word for "yes."
Most of the responses I've seen to "Yes-People" have been irritated scowling, wondering why this dumb-ass thing got nominated for an Oscar. Which I understand. "Yes-People" is definitely dumb. Considering the repetitive and meaningless dialogue, and characters doing stuff like farting or playing music badly, one assumes irritating the audience is the intended effect. Yet the sheer absurdity of "Yes-People" made me laugh a little. If you zoom out far enough, you probably can reduce most societal interactions down to one word. Plus, the exaggerated character designs are cute. I'm not sure it deserved an Oscar nomination but I still kind of liked it. It's better than "Hillbilly Elegy," at the very least. [6/10]
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