Asad
Children made to work, fight, or commit atrocities have been the topic of multiple films of late(Blood Diamond for example). Somalian pirates have been the stuff of recent headlines and news stories around the world. Asad capitalizes on these news and film trends with its story of Asad, a young Somalian boy who lacks no interest in the sea, but rather skill for fishing its depths. With Somalian rebels roaming the town, Asad creates a politicized backdrop for its story of the tug on Asad's life to either fish from the sea or pirate its waters. Just as the later films in the Scary Movie franchise failed to actually spoof -instead opting to simply reference, Asad references a lot about Somalia, but says little concerning it.
Curfew
Sometimes a film comes along that simultaneously captivates and enamors its audience from moment one. The opening shots of Curfew near a droll yet shocking perfection that will set the tone for the entire short. A black rotary phone sits ringing on a white tile floor as a bloodied hand reaches for it. The hand pulls the earpiece away and the shot alters to reveal a man with slit wrists sitting in a tub and clearly halfway through committing suicide. An angry woman asks for help condescendingly, peppering her requests with insults. She is the man's estranged sister and needs to him to watch her daughter (his 11-yr-old niece who he hasn't seen since her infancy) for a few hours. He begrudgingly gets out of the tub, bandages his wrists, dresses, and sets out on a night-time New York odyssey of self-discovery, redemption, and hope -all with a sardonic 11-yr-old girl. Lead actor, director, and writer Shawn Christensen is a revelation and certainly an emergent talent to watch. Curfew is by far the most cinematicly exiting of the nominees: not only for its deft blend of the poignant and comic, but for its great promise in the form of Christensen.
Henry
Riding on the coattails of Oscar's amour for Amour, Henry superimposes the experiences of a man's past onto the reality of his present to demonstrate time's timeless loss that age can bring. A love story and a tragedy, reflective but cathartic, Henry deserves its inclusion in the nominee pool, but ultimately left me wanting more Amour. The sentimentality that that film lacked, Henry wholeheartedly embraces, but not always to its detriment, as Henry confusedly cries, yells, and searches for his wife in a nursing home he feels locked prisoner in.
Death of a Shadow
Starring Rust and Bone's Matthias Schoenaerts, Death of a Shadow has the most inventive narrative content of all the nominees, but unfortunately lacks that same originality in its structure, overall visuals, and technical aspects. The short begins with the promising visual moment of a shadow walking down a cobblestone street until a camera is lowered away from the screen -revealing the form of a man who goes on to die. It is explained that this camera captures shadows in the moment of their owner's deaths and that deceased soldier Nathan Rijckx (Shoenaerts) is using it to rack up 10,000 shadows and thus earn his own life back. Using a time machine of sorts, Nathan travels across time to trap these shadows, and upon the completion of his quota, he will travel anywhere he chooses to in time to live out his new life. Where in time Nathan will go and what he will do with his new-found time will be influenced by his heart and what he sees through his camera on his final two missions. A visual feast could have been put on display in a film like this, a subversive story structure employed, but with the exception of its shadow imagery (only exploited to its full potential in one climactic sequence), in the end, Death of a Shadow is a visual disappointment in lieu of its extreme potential.
Buzkashi Boys
There is a school of though that a short film is one with a story too shallow to flesh out a deep feature-length movie from. Others think that a short film should be just that though: a SHORT (but fully realized in its narrative) FILM. Buzkashi Boys's plot easily could have warranted a full-lengthed feature with its recurring themes, circular story structure, relational development between characters, and with the statements it makes about socio/economic mobility; the film-makers simply chose to make their film last only around 30 minutes though. It's the story of two impoverished Afghanistani boys who dream of becoming Buzkashi (A polo-esque sport played with the carcass of a dead goat) players. One's belittlement by society, lack of familial connection, and general "alone"-ness allows him an unfettered life -unfettered from judgement but also from expectations or responsibility, and so he can dream big, without hindrance. The other has responsibilities, expectations, and assumptions of what he will and should be weighing him down. The freedom to do and be anything is unavailable to him. The other boy's unbridled and even reckless passion will awaken a yearning for possibility in him that will change him forever and open his eyes to value what is while never giving up on what could be.
WINNER: Buzkashi Boys
This was an amazingly hard decision between Buzkashi Boys and Curfew, but although the latter was more daring and cinematicly exiting in the world of film, Buzkashi Boys presented a more fully realized and fleshed out narrative.
Stay tuned for more of my 2012 Oscar Wishlist! And check out THIS REVIEW of the Live Action Shorts by Jeff Shannon that Roger posted to his website.
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