Film Reviews from Two Guys in the Dark: February 2019

Thursday, February 28, 2019

Never Look Away

Misery Manifested Into Art

Review by Ken Burke

Now that the Oscars have been awarded (my predictions posting has been updated with the results) it may be a bit late to review a film with a couple of nominations but no wins (along with hardly being available in domestic [U.S.-Canada] theaters—more on that farther below), but I really want to call your attention to this one (along with having slim interest in seeing the recent box-office-behemoths of How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World [Dean DeBlois] and Alita: Battle Angel [Robert Rodriguez], with their respective global grosses of $277.4 million, $265.8 million even as both are essentially still in debut-release-mode). So, if you don’t mind hearing German dialogue (probably requiring you to read subtitles) or sitting through 3 hrs., 8 min. of Nazi cruelties, Soviet repression, and (maybe worst of all, depending on your sensibilities) modern art, I encourage you to see Never Look Away wherever, however you can find it. Now, please indulge me as I tell you why.

Never Look Away (Florian Henckel
von Donnersmarck, 2018) rated R

“Executive Summary” (no spoilers): If you've noticed this film as a contender for Oscar’s Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography but had no idea what it was, don’t feel alone because it’s played in very few theaters in North America, not gotten the kind of critical praise I unabashedly believe it deserves, with no opportunity for me to see it until just before the awards were handed out (no, it didn’t get any). In the press notes, the director says the young-artist-protagonist’s “life makes it clear that we as humans have an almost alchemistic ability to make something good out of the difficult things in life that happen to us all […] Gerhard Richter [the inspiration for this story] was asked about the power of art. The gist of what he said was that he believed this was the wrong word. For him art didn’t have any power; rather, it exists to give consolation. I reflected for a long time about what he meant. I believe it means that every great work of art is concrete evidence that trauma can be transformed into something positive.” In this case, the trauma begins in 1937 Germany as a young boy sees firsthand the horrors the Nazi regime imposed upon his family, then as he grows into a young man after the war he’s under Soviet domination where his artistic talent as a painter’s forced to serve Socialist Realism to honor the workers of the state rather than any sense of personal expression, even as he yearns for such with a lover he meets in art school, never knowing a horrid secret about her heritage that would jeopardize their relationship if it ever became clear to him. Beyond that, you’ll either have to find this fine film in any way you can or just plunge into my spoiler-filled-summary right below. However you might access this contemporary near-masterpiece (as long as you can deal with those subtitles during the long-but-engaging-hours of your viewing), I encourage you to find it, see it, to witness how the Oscar voters let yet another deserving nominee escape the room without a merited reward.

Here’s the trailer: (Use the full screen button in the image’s lower right to enlarge it; activate that same button on the full screen’s lower right or your “esc” keyboard key to return to normal size.)

If you can abide plot spoilers read on, but as this blog’s intended for those who’ve seen the film—or want to save some bucks—to help any of you who’d like to learn more details yet avoid important plot-reveals I’ll identify such give-away sentences/sentence-clusters thusly:

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

What Happens: Dresden, Germany, 1937: 6-year-old Kurt Barnert (Cai Cohrs) lives with his aunt and grandmother because his parents have relocated to a somewhat-nearby-rural-town due to his schoolteacher-father refusing to join the National Socialist Party. His 23-year-old Aunt Elisabeth May (Saskia Rosendahl) takes him to see the “Degenerate Art” exhibition of works rejected by the Nazis as not representing the finer aspirations of European culture (the show consists of not only German Expressionism from the WW I/postwar-era which is intentionally troubling in content and style as a statement against the viciousness of that time but also pure abstractions by Mondrian, Kandinsky, etc. whose works were likewise seen as indicative of “madness”). While Kurt is intimidated by the uniformed museum guide denouncing all of these paintings and sculptures, reconsidering his young intentions of becoming an artist (I had similar interests as a child because of a natural drawing ability, largely influenced by comic strips and cartoons; fortunately, I was encouraged by my parents in this, ultimately leading to my BFA in Art Education including a lot of studio work), Elisabeth quietly admits to him she’s fascinated by these so-called “atrocities,” but she’s a free spirit in these repressive times as we see when they return home, exiting their bus where she asks the drivers of 5 parked buses to simultaneously honk their horns which sends her into a state of reverie. Despite her public acceptance as an admirable member of a local Hitler youth group, when at home her verboten private life continues when she plays piano in the nude, dumbfounding her nephew, telling him the note A over middle C is the answer tying the universe together, hoping to instill in him this profound—if highly personal—sense of the joy of life*; as her mother and another older female relative return to find her in this state she furthers her conviction of this transcendental discovery with slamming a glass ashtray onto her forehead until she's bleeding.

*While we’re now a long way from my usual concluding Musical Metaphor, when I saw this scene in the film I couldn’t help but think of the Moody Blues’ pairing of "The Word/OM" (from their 1968 album In Search of the Lost Chord; this video uses the song visualized with meditative images along with the lyrics just below the YouTube screen [if you click SHOW MORE]), a similar-although-a-bit-less-exuberant-than-Elisabeth’s-celebration of “The sounds of color and the light of a sigh […] But it’s all around if we could but perceive […] I know why the skies all cry OM, OM, Heaven, OM.”

Unbeknownst to Elisabeth’s family when they seek medical help for her (yet they should assume something’s not right when she’s forcefully taken away, telling Kurt as she leaves to “Never look away” [from life, because to see clearly what’s there is to know truth, equivalent to beauty]), there’s been a decision from the Nazi high command to sterilize, if not euthanize, Germans whose physical and/or mental conditions deem them as failed members of the so-called “master race,” allowing regional medical directors to insure these “unworthy” citizens won’t perpetuate their flawed genes within the Third Reich populace, so local doctor (who insists on being called “Herr Professor”) Carl Seeband (Sebastian Koch) judges her as schizophrenic, sends her away (despite her desperate begging for release) to be sterilized, later gassed in 1945 along with a roomful of others likewise condemned, without the family knowing anything further about her fate nor Seeband’s involvement (a brief scene notes that by 1940 at least 400,000 “weak” Germans had been removed in this manner). Intercut with Elisabeth’s horrific death is the Allied bombing of Dresden, leaving much of the city in rubble, soon followed by the Soviet invasion, with the jailing of any known upper-level-Nazis including Seeband. By 1948 with East Germany under Soviet control teenage Kurt’s (Tom Schilling) in a commercial art school where his father, Johann (Jörg Schüttauf), is a janitor, given only menial duties even though he was forced to join the National Socialist Party to survive during the war. Prof. Seeband’s back in a position of medical authority because he helped the wife of the local Russian commander, Major Murawjow (Evgeniy Sidikhin), successfully deliver her baby—saving the lives of both mother and child—so he’s under the Major’s protection, his willing leadership in the Nazi eugenics program kept secret. Kurt’s sent by his supervisor to the Dresden art academy where his skill at dictated Socialist Realism is praised (although he privately draws more Expressionist works) in a culture also denigrating what was rejected by the Nazis, with Picasso as an example of an artist whose early, more-realistic studies of the poor are praiseworthy before he wandered into the unacceptable realm of abstraction. While attending his classes Kurt meets, quickly falls in love with fashion-design-student Ellie Seeband (Paula Beer)—actually named Elisabeth, but Kurt won’t call her that in memory of his lost aunt—with no knowledge of who Ellie's father is, given Carl’s "renunciation" of his Nazi past in favor of his now-protective-Soviet-ideology.

Kurt and Ellie’s romance soon turns sexual in her elaborate home when her parents are away but their early arrival leads to naked Kurt jumping out the bedroom window, working his way down a huge tree, only to come face-to-face with Mom Martha Seeband (Ina Weisse) before he runs away. The lovebirds then concoct a story allowing Kurt to become a roomer with the Seebands (giving him easy access to Ellie), even though Dad doesn’t want his daughter involved with this “lesser” German (he knows Kurt’s father was a janitor who in despair of his wretched life committed suicide, although he doesn’t initially realize the connection to Elisabeth; Kurt, however, comes upon Dr. Dad one night having sex with the family’s business assistant but has to keep quiet about it). Soon, however, Ellie’s pregnant so the truth of the lovers comes out, with Dr. Seeband seeming to accept his daughter’s now-fiancée, although he lies to Kurt about Ellie having a medical condition that will kill her if she bears a child so he insists on an abortion (really to prevent the birth of this “inferior” baby), which he enhances to prevent future pregnancies. All of them end up fleeing into West Germany by 1961 as Dr. Seeband’s protector is transferred back to Moscow in 1957 leaving the former-Nazi in potential danger, then the young couple makes a quick escape in Berlin, crossing out of the Russian zone with no problem prior to The Wall being built. Kurt and Ellie move to Düsseldorf where he enrolls in another art academy, run by Prof. Antonius van Verten (Oliver Masucci), an eccentric who works only with felt and animal fat, requires all students to attend his lectures, yet doesn’t look at any of their work (“Only you will know if it’s good or not.”). ⇒Here, Kurt can explore any approach (conceptual art seems to be in vogue), but after he intrigues van Verten with a response in class one day the master comes to see his student’s experiments (sharing how a WW I airplane crash left him badly injured, nursed back to health by some locals who healed him with animal-fat-poultices), telling Kurt about Descartes’ discovery of “myself” yet Kurt’s various attempts aren’t a sincere expression of his inner being. Kurt stares at empty canvases while Ellie has a miscarriage, learning how her father sabotaged her body. All becomes resolved, though, as Kurt begin making paintings based on photos, then blurring them slightly, with the accidental juxtaposition one day on his overhead projector of Dr. Seeband with an image of young Kurt and Elisabeth. A painting of this unnerves Seeband who’s since learned the full truth of Kurt’s family, although Kurt never knows Seeband’s connection to him (a plot point I appreciate, keeping appropriate tension between them without leading to a big Hollywood reveal), Ellie gets pregnant after all, Kurt’s round of photo-based-paintings is a big hit in a local gallery in 1966, then Kurt ends this story by chancing upon a group of parked busses, getting the drivers to simultaneously honk as he makes connection with Elisabeth’s long-ago-joy, the film ending on a freeze-frame of his face.⇐

So What? This film’s narrative is inspired by the life and early works of renowned contemporary German artist Gerhard Richter (go here if you like for an extensive exploration of this man), although—despite active collaboration between Richter and von Donnersmarck in preproduction—Richter has completely distanced himself from the resulting film, apparently feeling it’s not fictionalized enough from the specifics of his actual biography (with one notable difference being it was his sister, Marianne, rather than his aunt who was euthanized by the Nazis [starved to death because of mental problems]); in the long interview with von Donnersmarck in the Related Links section below he notes the aesthetic value of fictionalizing biographies on screen so one can produce Citizen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941) rather than Citizen Hearst, although it’s clear Richter’s reacted to Never Look Away in a manner similar to William Randolph Hearst’s bitter rejection of … Kane (but at least Richter didn’t try to organize Hollywood studios to destroy the negative as was the case with Hearst vs. RKO back in the day). The critical establishment as a whole seems to lean somewhat toward Richter, with 77% positive reviews at Rotten Tomatoes, an even-less-supportive 69% average score based on the reviews at Metacritic (more details in the Related Links section of this posting). Representative of the naysayers is Ty Burr of the Boston Globe: “Above all, it’s a meditation on art and creativity that’s by turns earnest, troubled, sentimental, and middlebrow. It’s a big, glossy affair that somehow feels rather small. […]The movie’s mantra, repeated by more than one character, is that ‘What is true is beautiful.’ The movie itself proves that what is beautiful isn’t always true,” while I’m more in league with Christopher Orr of The Atlantic: “An immense revelation is hinted at, and then made explicit, but almost no character in the movie seems to comprehend it. […] the film more than earns its commanding title: You will not want to look away.” Oscar nominators didn’t look away either, finalizing Never … for the races in the Best Foreign Language Film and Best Cinematography categories (although it lost to Roma [Alfonso Cuarón, 2018] for both); I’d have gone for Roma as well for the cinematography award but shifted my embrace to Never Look Away for Foreign Film (after finally seeing it last weekend) from Cold War (Pawel Pawlikowski, 2018) although I did predict the latter for winning the cinematography prize (another of my several misses). However I may have fared with Oscar predictions, though, I have no hesitation in saying Never Look Away should have won the Foreign Language Film award, given its blend of beauty and atrocity, forcing us to see how they’re intertwined, at least in this manipulated version of Gerhard Richter’s early career (he's emerged since then into a versatile, multi-talented imagemaker).

Bottom Line Final Comments: I certainly can’t promise you would have the same positive reaction to Never Look Away that I did, nor can I even hope you might be able to find it (short of it being available on some video service, always possible in our instant-gratification-society) as it’s playing in only 80 domestic theaters (a drastic increase up from a mere 4 previously) even though it’s been in release for 12 weeks (likely laying in wait, hoping the Oscar noms [and desired-but-not-fulfilled-wins] would position it better for consideration in art theaters during these winter-months-lulls in those non-commercial-venues), having brought in a tiny gross of $469.6 thousand so far (in domestic dollars; I have no info on how it’s done in other markets), making it likely you’ll see it—if at all—on a disc or through some On Demand-type delivery, but I do highly encourage you to seek it out if any descriptions I’ve given you make it seem like something you’d like to invest some (lengthy, I admit) time in. (Also, while the past can’t be held accountable for what happens in the present—even as we must meticulously stay aware of that past so as not to repeat its destructive mistakes—you might be further encouraged to watch this film knowing it’s directed by the same guy who helmed The Lives of Others [2006], an earlier Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film, a marvelous, somber-yet-engaging story of the secret monitoring of East Berlin citizens by the Stasi [secret police] in those days not long before The Wall finally came down.)

Maybe part of what attracted me to Don’t Look Away is my own earlier-life-connection to the scenes of a painter trying to find his own vision within an art-school-incubator, his unique attempts at inspiration when confronted by authority as Kurt was at one point by indecision, even though I did find my way to creating individual images joining the better ones in my late-‘60s time at UT Austin’s Art Dept., only to be told when I offered my work to a local gallery that I should come back later when I had canvases more specific to me than the teachers I’d studied under (even though my paintings looked nothing like theirs), just as Kurt’s enigmatic headmaster had bluntly rejected his abstractions as not being true to his own insights. I also appreciated how this film showed (just as Cold War does about post-WW II-Soviet-repression in Poland) East Germany trading in the harsh regime of the Nazis for Nazi-hating-but-just-as-repressive-postwar-Soviet-domination, presenting clearly the absurd reality that government-dictated-constructs of how lives should be lived are remarkably similar no matter what the stated ideology may be.* I’d like to able to continue my naïve childhood thinking that such mandated interference in the common good for the benefit of the oligarchs (or worse) who (indirectly [?]) run a country aren’t something I need to be concerned with, but all I have to do is watch Michael Cohen testify before Congress to know Never Look Away’s message isn’t just about finding beauty in all that’s around us (as Aunt Elisabeth professed) but also requires keeping a close eye on our leaders, whomever they may be.** When you put all of this together in such a marvelous exposé of how truth and beauty struggle to liberate themselves from the forces attempting to overwhelm them you end up with insightful, engrossing cinematic activity.

*I’m about to use The Who in my official Musical Metaphor below, so here’s a preview to fit my notes on interchangeable-repressions in Never Look Away with "Won't Get Fooled Again" (on the 1971 album Who’s Next), verified by the bleak ending: “Meet the new boss Same as the old boss.”

**For those not yet repulsed by my frequent left-wing-sentiments (although such readers probably turned away from this blog long ago—which encourages me there’s still so many who are at least conceptually open to looking at it, as evidenced by our healthy international “hit list” of interactors in the image at the very end of this posting) I’ll note the encouragement I find in the intersection between art and commerce at the (close to where I live) Oakland, CA Grand Lake Theater where owner Allen Michaan never hesitates to honor free speech along with his topical movie screenings.

As usual for these Two Guys in the Dark postings, I’ll wrap up my observations with a Musical Metaphor, allowing us one last consideration on this film but now from the perspective of the aural arts to offer us a sense of what it was all about without necessarily being too literal in the process. For Never Look Away what I’m drawn to is The Who’s “I’m Free” (from their 1969 rock-opera-album Tommy) at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGa70tVYVKo, using a scene taken from the album-inspired-movie Tommy (Ken Russell, 1975) in which the titular-protagonist (played by The Who’s lead singer, Roger Daltry) is shaken loose from his previously-inner-directed-state of being deaf, mute, and blind where suddenly “freedom tastes of reality,” just as when painter Kurt finally found in his process of re-imaging, blurring photographs (some personal to him, others more removed) his long-sought-sense of artistic freedom, no longer condemned for his interest in various modernist movements, forced to glorify the state with Socialist Realism, lost in his attempts to follow others (such as Pollock, Rauschenberg, even Warhol in Kurt’s initial renderings of the photo-paintings before adding the personalized, defining, blurring brushstrokes), now able “To reach the highest high” with a unique vision as well as be honored for finding this intriguing mode of expression. Never Look Away’s focused at this final point on Kurt’s personal triumph of freedom (embracing Aunt Elisabeth’s passion for the fullness of life, praising the truth which makes anything beautiful), with his celebratory release of multi-honking-bus-horns, his sense of enlightenment that should hopefully encourage all of us to follow his lead, despite any reservations/limitations/explanations that have previously constrained us in our life choices (“You’d laugh and say nothing’s that simple But you’ve been told many times before Messiahs pointed to the door And no one had the guts to leave the temple!”). Hopefully, we can all learn from Tommy and Kurt because, as they say, “I’m waiting for you to follow me” (not as guru but as your companion) to a grand state of enlightenment.

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AND … at least until the Oscars for 2018’s releases have been awarded on Sunday, February 24, 2019 we’re also going to include reminders in each posting of very informative links where you can get updated tallies of which 2018 films have been nominated for and/or received various awards

and which ones made various individual critic’s Top 10 lists. You may find the diversity among the various awards competitions and the various critics hard to reconcile at times—not to mention the often-significant-gap between critics’ choices and competitive-award-winners (which pales when compared to the even-more-noticeable-gap between specific award winners and big box-office-grosses you might want to monitor here)—but as that less-than-enthusiastic-patron-of-the-arts, Plato, noted in The Symposium (385-380 BC)—roughly translated, depending on how accurate you wish the actual quote to be—“Beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder,” so your choices for success are as valid as any of these others, especially if you offer some rationale for your decisions (unlike many of the awards voters who simply fill out ballots, sometimes for films they’ve never seen).

To save you a little time scrolling through the “various awards” list above, here are the current Golden Globe nominees and winners for films and TV from 2018 along with the Oscar nominees and winners for 2018 films.

Here’s more information about Never Look Away:

https://www.sonyclassics.com/neverlookaway/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6XqIsq7BiL0 (28:08 interviews with [enormously tall] writer-director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck, producer Quirin Berg, and actors Paula Beer,

Sebastian Koch, Tom Schilling)

https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/never_look_away

https://www.metacritic.com/movie/never-look-away

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If you’d rather contact Ken directly rather than leaving a comment here please use my email address of kenburke409@gmail.com. (But if you truly have too much time on your hands you might want to explore some even-longer-and-more-obtuse-than-my-film-reviews—if that even seems possible—academic articles about various cinematic topics at my website, https://kenburke.academia.edu, which could really give you something to talk to me about.)

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken

P.S. Just to show that I haven’t fully flushed Texas out of my system here’s an alternative destination for you, Home in a Texas Bar, with Gary P. Nunn and Jerry Jeff Walker. But wherever the rest of my body may be my heart’s always with my longtime-companion, lover, and wife, Nina Kindblad, so here’s our favorite shared song—Neil Young’s "Harvest Moon"

—from the performance we saw at the Desert Trip concerts in Indio, CA on October 15, 2016 (as a full moon was rising over the stadium) because “I’m still in love with you,” my dearest, a never-changing-reality even as the moon waxes and wanes over the months/years to come.

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Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month (which they seem to measure from right now back 30 days) the total unique hits at this site were 61,537 (as always, we thank all of you for your support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers); below is a snapshot of where and by what means those responses have come from within the previous week:

Thursday, February 21, 2019

Oscar Nominees, Short Films—Live Action and Animation

Mini-Reviews by Ken Burke

I’ve finally been able to get well enough to leave my local neighborhood (not that Hayward, CA’s such a bad place to be, but you don’t get much of the cinematic world here beyond mainstream movies) to see 2 of the Oscar-nominated categories for short films. If you go to this site, then scroll down a bit you can find brief trailers for each of these 10 Oscar nominees noted in the cluster of mini-reviews below (along with the Documentary ones which I haven't seen). These films are only available now in theaters but will likely be added at some point to offerings on ShortsTV which can be accessed through many on-demand-cable-providers in countries worldwide, while hundreds of short films are also available via download through such services as iTunes, Amazon Instant Video, Google Play, Verizon, and Frontier. As for my Oscar predictions (in our February 6, 2019 posting), I’ve now amended those prognostications to include these Shorts categories discussed below* (I’ve also made a minor switch in Best Cinematography); tune in to the live—and long, of course—awards broadcast (ABC TV, 5pm PT, Sunday Feb. 24, 2019) to see just how insightful (or not) I was.

*Although it may be anybody’s guess as to which nominees in these contests will win because for the Documentary Feature, Foreign Language Film, and all 3 Shorts categories the only members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences who can vote in any of those specific races must watch all 5 nominees for a given category so the frequent bandwagon effect for other awards isn’t as likely to be a consideration for these prizes. If you have a lot to time to kill you can go here to see the entire lengthy set of Oscar eligibility rules (explaining why some Shorts below are valid for 2018 consideration despite being released in their home countries in 2017), submission, and voting.

⇒The first and last words will be noted with arrows and red.⇐ OK, now continue on if you prefer.

LIVE ACTION

Detainment (Vincent Lambe) Ireland, 30 min.

Detainment's about an actual crime in 1993 Merseyside county, UK (events near or in Liverpool) against 2-year-old toddler James Bulger, based on transcripts of police interrogation of the 2 10-year-old boys arrested for killing him (putting this story into the realm of docudramas, but that doesn’t make it a documentary film by Oscar rules, given it’s more than a “partial reenactment”). Based on surveillance footage from a shopping mall authorities had good reason to detain Jon Venables and Robert Thompson, seeing them steal some items, then leaving the mall with James during a brief moment when his mother was distracted; testimony from people in the neighborhood confirmed the older boys walked around the area with Bulger but they did nothing about it because the kids claimed he was a lost child they were taking to a local police station. While we see scenes of all this, most of the film’s occupied with separate interrogations of Venables and Thompson, in which they each blame the other for anything that may have happened to the child, each claiming innocence of any crime (to learn more about the realities of this situation, go here) ⇒Jon’s mother’s alternatively protective of or angry with him; if I correctly understood who’s in these frames I’d say Robert’s accompanied by an almost-silent-father when questioned by the cops. Based on what I’ve read about the murder, James was horribly abused, likely died from skull fractures, but at least we’re not shown any of that in this film. Thompson remained defiant throughout, yet gives us the sense he led Venables in this crime because Jon’s the one who eventually admits his role in the killing, crying desperately to Mom (although an older Jon’s the one returned to jail a couple of times for parole violation but not noted in the film, as pre-credits-text only says the boys were tried, convicted as adults).⇐ Despite all its horrific content, Detainment's a relatively quiet experience, focused on implications rather than graphic results, giving us a brutal sense of how meaningless a human life can be to those with no sense of moral decency. It could easily take the Oscar (it’s won several awards already), but I’ve another candidate to discuss farther below in this nominees-tally.

Fauve (Jeremy Comte) Canada, 16 min.

You’ll have to deal with French subtitles here (maybe even if you speak French, as I understand the Canadian dialect centered in Quebec is often unintelligible to native European speakers) in another tale of 2 boys—also about 10, I’d say—out for an afternoon of fun and exploration. We first see them in an abandoned train playing some sort of game where you get a point (toward a winning score of 6) for something you either do or don’t do (I didn’t really catch it; wasn’t that important in the overall plot), then they wander through the countryside to what appears to be an abandoned surface mine, but as they move away from the buildings to a small lake one of them (Tyler, I think his name is) gets caught up a bit in quicksand, frightening him somewhat even as his companion laughs at the difficulties. Finally, the boy pulls himself loose, but when his friend wanders over close to him Tyler flips the other one into this muck as well, although he’s further toward the center of it, finding himself incapable of pulling loose. Tyler (the shirtless one in the photo accompanying this paragraph) fails to find any solution to his buddy’s crisis as he’s being sucked further into the quicksand. ⇒From here, the story moves in a simple-but-terrifying-direction as the trapped boy is pulled fully under the surface mud with his frantic friend running all over the place, unsuccessfully looking for help. Later, he’s walking along a road when a woman drives by, picks him up, tries to get him to tell her who he is, what he’s doing out in this open countryside, where he’s going. Tyler tries to say something about the sure death of his friend but can hardly get any words out.⇐ This one’s piled up an enormous number of awards already, certainly effective as an unexpected, heartbreaking situation, although a bit more impactful for setup rather than final result. A standard translation of the title would be “wild, uninhibited” (as with the early 20^th century painters—most famously Henri Matisse—called Fauvists [“Wild Beasts”] because of their bold use of color), which could refer to the attitude these boys wanted to have toward themselves or how the unexpected “wildness” of nature proves to be something these boisterous kids ultimately cannot take control of.

Madre (Rodrigo Sorogoyen, 2017) Spain, 19 min.

Here’s another tale of a child in trouble, which just adds to the gloom of watching this program of Shorts, all well-made, all emotionally-impactful, but increasingly bitter to see in context of their content. Despite being roughly as long as the others (except for Detainment, notably the maximum of this group even though its half-hour-running-time never seems unnecessarily stretched out), Madre feels like it’s much shorter than it is because the premise is so direct, the tension’s built so quickly and sustained, the ending’s such a shock. We begin with a young woman somewhere in Spain coming into to her mother’s flat as they mildly argue about something, leaving the initial impression (at least to me) the focus will be on the older woman as the “madre” of the story. That assumption quickly changes, though, when the daughter gets a call from her 7-year-old-son, on vacation with his father (her ex-husband) at a beach in the French Basque country. The initially-pleasant-call quickly changes tone, though, when the boy tells her he doesn’t know where Dad is or where they are (we’ve seen a long, wide-screen pan of a deserted beach under the opening credits; that sense of audience observation-turned-to-voyeurism continues with the interior setting where the camera dollies around the comfortable, open spaces, belying such tranquility with the quickly-rising-tension of the situation). ⇒With the mother on one phone, the grandmother on another the horror for both these parents intensifies as the boy can’t find Dad anywhere, his phone battery’s weakening, a strange man appears calling to the boy, Mom tells him to run and hide, yet when she attempts to contact the local police for help (despite not knowing exactly where her son is in the neighboring country) she’s told she must file a report before they can do anything on her behalf. As this escalating situation comes to an abrupt halt, the boy tells Mom the man has discovered him, the boy’s phone goes dead, frantic Mom runs out the front door to drive to where she thinks she might know the location of the beach (forcing us to finish this off with a repeat of that lonely opening shot).⇐ Madre’s won many dozens of awards thus far, more than any of the other nominees, with its unexpected ending either leaving you impressed with its sudden surprise or frustrated about whatever else might need to be known about these ambiguous plot elements (that's my response).

Marguerite (Mariane Farley, 2017) Canada, 19 min.

While this short film continues the wide range of sadness explored by the others in this category, at least it’s not violent (directly or implied), as the rest of them are. Basically, it’s a simple story of a nurse doing home care (bathing, leg massages, checking of vital signs) for an elderly woman who lives alone (approaching death we’re led to assume, given the nurse’s concern about her patient’s low blood sugar level, what it could mean for the kidneys and liver). Content-wise, this narrative is the most simple (simplistic, if you want to be harsh, but there’s no need for that given the sincere intentions of the filmmakers), straightforward of the 10 I’m commenting on here, presenting a situation more than a plot, so I can’t really say much about what happens without getting into my upcoming spoiler territory. ⇒One day the old woman hears the nurse on a phone conversation with her lover; we learn it’s a woman as the caregiver reveals a bit about herself to her patient. Later, we see the old woman looking through a book of equally-old-photos, all of which (as best I saw them as the pages turned) were of women (maybe just one woman; I can’t say, given the quick screen time they occupied), except the last, which was of a wedding, presumably our protagonist and her late husband. At another time, Marguerite (I assume that’s the name of our primary character; if it was made clear, I missed it) asks the nurse what’s it’s like to make love to a woman, to which she replies “wonderful” (or something like that), leading to Marguerite revealing she was once attracted to a woman but couldn’t act on it because of the times. As she’s lying in bed resting the nurse gets in on the other side, sort of spooning her in a caring manner, not implying there’s going to be any sexual exchange.⇐ This is a touching story addressing a sincrerely-sorrowful-loss likely shared by many LGBTQ people never able to reveal their true selves (the film actively rewarded as such with dozens of prizes) which esteemed film critic Mick LaSalle of my local San Francisco Chronicle says will win the Oscar, but I’m just not as moved by it (hard-hearted-bastard that I am) as by the others in this category, maybe because it’s a quiet, melancholy, sadly-honest statement whereas the others are seeped in variations of more cinematically-dynamic-horror so it doesn’t rattle me as much as its fellow-contenders do. Still, it’s an authentic expression of loss and compassion, easily understood by anyone (gay or straight) whose life couldn’t follow the path it hoped to have sought.

Skin (Guy Nattiv) USA, 20 min.

What LaSalle prefers here—as do I—is the harshest one of all, not because I like such cruelty but because of what it hopes to teach about grotesque human behavior, put into some of the bluntest, most powerful terms I’ve seen on screen (press notes say a feature-length-version of Skin, starring Jamie Bell and Vera Farmiga, arrives in late 2019 [after premiering at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival, winning the Fipresci Critic’s Prize], following its European debut this year at the Berlin International Film Festival). Possibly what hit me so hard was a sense of recognition about people I knew growing up in Texas in the 1950’s-‘60s, but my 3 viewing companions had the same gut-punch-reaction even though they were all born in Oakland, CA, grew up and continue to live in the ultra-liberal SF Bay Area (which doesn’t mean there aren’t hardcore racists here too, but at least they don’t manifest themselves as publically—or as often—as others who make more disturbing headlines). Skin occurs in some small, unidentified, blue-collar town where a White, skinhead-attitude-father (even though he sports closely-cropped-hair) is at a supermarket with his 10-year-old son when he notices the boy’s made eye-contact with a Black man at another counter. Dangerous Dad follows the man out of the store, attacks him joined by several of his thuggish friends so the victim has no chance of defense, even as his frantic wife’s trying to call 911 where help seems to be a slim option. Later we see the hatemonger, his wife, son, and some friends at target practice on a shooting range, the kid even encouraged to use a semi-automatic assault weapon. ⇒From here the story takes increasingly violent turns as the guy and his son find their way home one night blocked by a van; Dad gets out to take action, he’s suddenly grabbed, thrown into the van, drugged, taken to a home-laboratory of sorts. At first, through closeups, it seems his tattoos are being modified but when the transformation’s complete we see his skin's now about as dark as any human’s can be. He’s tossed out on a road, comes to, walks home, but the glimpses his wife gets through a window causes her to confront him with a pistol until he stumbles inside at which point she recognizes him even though she can hardly believe her eyes. Just as she lowers her gun, we hear a shot, he drops dead, revealing the boy behind him with the military-grade-weapon.⇐ Given this father’s attitudes and actions, maybe it’s not unreasonable to see this ending as justifiable revenge as his wicked chickens come home to roost, but overall this depiction of the worst aspects of human nature is a haunting exposé of ignorant racism,* a shocking twist on a bigot’s worst nightmare. This is my favorite of this group, as well as what I think will take the Oscar.

*A tragedy which continues to thrive, illustrated by the recent report of Alabama newspaper editor/publisher Goodloe Suttonon calling for a resurgence of the KKK and its atrocious lynchings.

Regular readers of this blog (about the dozen of you I know from “Likes” on my weekly Facebook posts along with a few other sources, although somehow there are many 1,000s more who keep coming back here on a weekly basis according to Google—see the tallies in the image at the very end of this posting) know I prefer to end my reviews with a Musical Metaphor using the aural arts for some final commentary on whatever it is I’ve just been talking about. Well, I'll admit I’m not creative nor energetic enough to come up with 10 of those for this posting so in the case of the Live Action cluster I’ll gladly offer you a marvelous Simon and Garfunkel song from their Bookends album (1968), called “Save the Life of My Child” at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gcbNnrO3_Bg, which is certainly metaphorical where a couple of these films are concerned (especially Marguerite, more about a woman approaching death mourning the “child” of her younger self, never being able to be honest about her true sexual longings) but more direct regarding the others, not about a child jumping off a tall building (as in the song) but about children actually gone (Fauve), probably lost for good (Madre), or whose souls are dead in either a wicked environment (Skin) or the uncaring moment of spontaneous cruelty (Detainment), in all cases resulting in “desperate mother[s]” onscreen or off crying “Save the life of my child!” (I’ll also note before moving on that while I’ve arranged these nominees by their alphabetical listing the theatrical program of Animation deviates from that a little to put Animal Behavior as the third one shown to inject some humor into the flow of sentiment/melancholy of the other entries; the screened Live Action program’s more diverse, starting with Madre, followed by Fauve, relaxing a bit in tension with Marguerite, then flows into a climax with Detainment and Skin.)

ANIMATION

Animal Behavior (Alison Snowden, David Fine)
Canada, 14 min.

Imagine a group therapy session conducted by a dog (Dr. Clement [who admits he's worked to overcome his addiction to sniffing other dogs' butts]) where the members are all other animals—a slug (I think) upset with her mate, a female praying mantis annoyed with her lack of a love life (due to eating her mates), a disturbed bird (whose problems stem from disgust at having to eat worms as a baby [I think; where I saw this one the sound was noticeably lower]), a cat with hairball problems (sympathetically-noted as obsessive-compulsive disorder), a pig with an eating disorder who keeps visiting the snack table but tries to hide his plate when anyone comments on his nibbling—whose already-fragile-decorum’s upset by the arrival of angry ape Victor, in complete denial of his temper ⇒until he goes on a rampage triggering an attack from Dr. Clement, resulting in Victor throwing a stick-like piece of destroyed furniture out the window chased by the dog seemingly to disaster. This calms Victor down, Dr. Clement climbs back through the window, Victors cries as he admits he’s tired of being assumed to be an aggressive bully because of his size, but just as he’s finding relief in opening up time expires on the session so they all have to leave. Out in the hallway the praying (or is it “preying”?) mantis asks Victor if he’s got any plans tonight.⇐ The animation’s effectively simple here, there’re some effective comic interchanges among the group, with the temporarily-scary-hostility from Victor quickly restored to order, although the entire situation’s based on a cluster of expected-stereotype-situations which does get a bit long even for a short film. It’s cute but quickly forgotten as others roll by; so far it’s won about a dozen awards at various festivals.

Bao (Domee Shi) USA, 8 min.

This is set in a Chinese immigrant community in Canada (I learned this from the press materials in that first site I noted above; I wouldn’t say it’s information clear from or essential to a viewing)—home for most of her life for Shi, the first female writer-director of a Pixar short—where an aging woman longing for a child suddenly has a magical encounter with a little dumpling who pops to life, grateful for her affection. She shares all aspects of her days with him, where’s he’s sometimes energetically-distracted but essentially a good son although he quickly grows into adolescence, becomes withdrawn from her, spends too much time with his rowdy friends, then comes home one day with a blonde woman whom he’s just married. ⇒As he attempts to grab his suitcase, then leave home for good, broken-hearted Mom eats him in a fit of anger, then sobs uncontrollably. At this point, the situation shifts into a more-realistic-mode as Dad sees her sorrow, encourages their actual young adult son to come visit Mom so they reconnect with the last scene being the 3 of them together with the blonde wife where the new bride succeeds in making dumplings.⇐ Bao offers a cute idea which transforms into melancholy, shock, then easy resolution, moving me a bit less in the end than how it starts out (this is the only Short Film Oscar finalist I’d previously seen until last week, running before The Incredibles 2 [Brad Bird, 2018; review in our June 21, 2018 posting] last summer, where I liked it a bit better then because it’s hard to respond to it in the same manner when the fundamental surprise is known). Animation style is of the usual superb Pixar standard (although more cartoony than some of their work), holding a solid probability of winning this Oscar.

Late Afternoon (Louise Bagnall, 2017)
Ireland, 10 min

An elderly woman, Emiy, gets a cup of tea from her caretaker, Kate, as the much younger woman goes about packing up things in the house. Emily, inspired by a chunk of biscuit floating in her teacup, then later paging through a book or looking at a photo of herself and (presumably) her deceased-husband has various memory-swirls of herself as a girl on the beach with her father and other times from her past ⇒ending with her now the mother of her own little daughter who uses a stick to carve her name, Kate, in the sand, which, back in the present helps Emily push through the fog of her intermittent dementia to realize this helpful caretaker is that joyous daughter now grown up.⇐ The animation style’s purposely simple here to more easily blend the actual present with the remembered past, producing a sweet, sentimental statement easily appreciated by anyone with an aging, facilities-declining spouse, relative, or friend, a message always appreciated but possibly done more effectively, with a different focus, in the opening montage of Pixar’s feature Up (Pete Doctor and Bob Peterson, 2009) as elderly widower Carl Fredricksen remembers the joy he shared with his late wife, prior to setting out on a final adventure in her memory. Late Afternoon presents us with an reaffirmation that never falls out of style, but, for me, it evaporates after one viewing in the same way as often does Emily’s awareness of herself and her surroundings. Many other viewers find it more lasting than that, though, as it’s already won several festival awards worldwide.

One Small Step (Andrew Chesworth, Bobby Pontillas)
USA and China, 8 min.

Sentiment’s at the heart of One Small Step too as a Chinese-American father, Chu (although his appearance reminds me more of Geppetto from Disney’s Pinocchio [too many directors to cite, 1940]), a cobbler, and his young daughter, Luna, live in San Francisco where the child’s fascinated by space travel, longs to one day be an astronaut.. The animation style’s a bit more refined here (more evoking Disney and Pixar than the others so far in this program of contenders), with quick scene changes to indicate Luna’s growth into adolescence as her father quietly repairs the various shoes his daughter wears out in her energetic approach to life. However, once she gets to an astrophysics college she doesn’t devote enough time to her studies, makes poor grades, is turned down in her application for astronaut training. ⇒Luna mopes around, doesn’t pay much attention to Dad until one day she returns home from her classes to find her father’s not at the kitchen table where he always sits, doing his work; again, through quick cuts we realize he’s dead which inspires Luna (after she finds a box of her old repaired shoes) to buckle down in her studies, leading to academic success, acceptance for astronaut training upon another application, eventually becoming part of the program where she joins a voyage to the moon, thinking back lovingly on Chu.⇐ Despite my ambivalent attitude toward the parent-child-bonding here (I see it as a nice experience but highly-predictable, not even sure if Luna’s discovery of the box of shoes is a surprise to her [if so, why hadn’t Chu given them back to her earlier?] or just the needed inspiration to push her out of her doldrums), an enormous number of festivals have given this Short some sort of “Best” award or at least accepted it for screening, so maybe I’m becoming just as much of an old codger as Carl is in Up (see my Marguerite review). Anyway, it’s pleasant, just nothing all that great.

Weekends (Trevor Jimenez) USA, 15 min.

In contrast, Weekends is considerably more challenging in its subject matter, exploration of that content, animation style, and overall impact, making it the one I prefer (just a bit more than Bao) of this group of nominees. Set in 1980 Toronto (Jimenez is originally from Canada)—again, the era only clear to me from press notes, although skyline shots of the city clearly indicate the location—we follow the dialogue-less life of a young boy sharing his weekends with his wealthy father, who lives in an upscale, high-rise apartment, while his weekdays are spent with Mom in decidedly less-luxurious-surroundings as she struggles as a single parent, studying for an accounting degree (she also has something wrong with her neck as she wears a brace on it throughout this story). Dad’s kind to the boy as they eat takeout food surrounded by his collection of Japanese armor and swords, with the additional luxury of what seems to be a carousel horse in the kid's bedroom looking out over the city’s night lights, a place which inspires him into swirling dreams or flights of surreal fantasy as objects float all over the place, just as he flows from home to home. ⇒Over time, both parents take on new lovers but with different results as Dad marries his lady while Mom’s guy turns abusive until she’s rid of him. By the end of our hauntingly-constructed-story, Dad’s moving out of his place to be with the new wife somewhere else, giving us the sense the son won’t be visiting such a site of material luxury of his own in the future, although Mom’s now got her degree with her small environment becoming more accommodating (or maybe just finished, as earlier scenes showed a bare room where the kid decorates the walls with his multi-colored-paint-handprints).⇐ This style’s more abstracted than Bao but less cartoony than Animal Behavior or Late Afternoon, kept constantly in motion by the swift change of scenery and the boy’s imaginings of his never-stable-world. I found both content and approach to be fascinating, as have the award-givers at many festivals. It’s my choice for the Oscar, although I assume the statuette goes to Bao.

(Now you have my predictions for the 2 categories above you might be interested in thoughts on Best Picture from The New York Times and the whole Oscar enchilada from Variety, neither offering much support for many of my predictions in that link I noted up there in the first paragraph.)

The entire running time of this program is just about 1 hour so the ShortsTV folks have pushed it up for the theatrical showings to about 90 min. by adding 2 more they call Highly Recommended, the first one being Wishing Box (USA, didn’t catch the director, can’t find any further info about it) set on a pirate ship with only 1 pirate (and his monkey), a guy disappointed to open a treasure box yet finding it empty, but then the monkey reaches in, gets a banana. The pirate tries again to no avail, even as the monkey keeps coming up with a variety of fruits. ⇒Greed increasing, the pirate draws pictures of what he’d like the monkey to retrieve, yet none of it’s what he wants until he yanks a gold tooth out of his mouth to show his pet. This treasure the monkey can get, then starts shoveling up mounds of gold teeth to the pirate’s delight until their weight sinks the ship. At the end, they’re floating on a piece of driftwood when the fruit pops to the water’s surface so they both enjoy a bite.⇐ The real treasure for me, though, is Tweet Tweet (Russia) where the animation’s realistic but the storyline’s abstracted as the constant presence on screen is a line running from left to right, starting as a clothesline a little bird perches on, soon to be joined by a baby (all we see are the legs), turning into a girl, then a young woman, joined by a young man (the bird’s always there too) whose bare feet are suddenly in boots as a PA speaker says something about war (the clothesline turns into barbed wire but the effect’s one continuous shot, not edits), ⇒followed by a telegram to her about his death, then—after a quick montage indicating the passage of decades—her elderly legs finally reaching the end of the (snow-covered) rope (a bit of a visual pun). The bird initially succeeds in keeping her from jumping to whatever comes next, but then she does, leaving him alone to work his way back to an initial clothespin until a little snow’s thrown at him from screen right, so he flies off in that direction.⇐ I was really moved by this one (would give it 4 stars in an actual review), sad to see it’s not in the Oscar finals (where it could easily replace One Small Step).

Paul Simon helps me find an almost-inclusive-Musical Metaphor for this group of short films as well (except for Animal Behavior, although some might prefer to trace all therapy discussions back to foundational-Freudian-concerns about children’s traumatic relationships to Mama) with “Mother and Child Reunion” (from his 1972 Paul Simon album) found at https://www.you tube.com/watch?v=L0BU sDf0dxY, given the direct applications to Bao, Late Afternoon, and One Small Step, along with how the kid we see in Weekends finds greater peace with his Mom than his Dad, despite all those material comforts he indulged in with his father. You might also enjoy watching a live version of this melodic Simon song, taken from the relatively-recent-conclusion of his energetic farewell tour last year (which I was so happy to see in Oakland, CA); then it flows into another song about parents and children but this content’s not-so-joyful in “Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard” (from the same album; be advised the whistling on this video sounded better when you were at the concert) which might get us back to some of the underlying parental problems (especially for that frantic, neurotic birdie) in Animal Behavior after all.

In closing I’ll note I have recommendations from my long-time contributor in Texas, Richard Parker, and one of my usual weekend viewing companions here in northern CA, Jim Graham (the former knows battlefields first hand, the latter's a history major back in college) to see They Shall Not Grow Old, Peter Jackson’s extraordinary project of using century-old, black & white, silent footage of WW I British soldiers which he enhanced, colorized, and added dialogue to either from recordings of the time or current actors speaking the words being mouthed on-screen (verified by lip-readers) to bring these people alive for us contemporary viewers. Apparently, it’s an amazing experience that shouldn’t be missed (99% positive RT reviews, 91% average RT score) so I’ll encourage you to see it as soon as you can (if you can; after being in release for 9 weeks it’s now in only 626 domestic [U.S.-Canada] theaters), which may be before I get to it given other events soon scheduled for me (it’s available on DVD, though; maybe also through other video options). If They Shall Not Grow Old is as great as it seems to be you’d think it’d be an Oscar contender but for documentary features the application has to be in by October 1 of the current release year (which it missed), yet it’s still a 2018 film so it can’t be considered next winter along with actual 2019 releases (as the old saying reminds us: “No good deed goes unpunished.”). For now I can offer you the trailer and a short clip (4:17) from this unique, probably extraordinary cinematic experience (Jim tells me about 30 of the roughly 90 min. features Jackson explaining his production methods).

Related Links Which You Might Find Interesting:

*A Google software glitch causes every Two Guys posting prior to August 26, 2016 to have an inaccurate (dead) link to this Summary page; from then forward, though, this link is accurate.

Here’s more information about 2019 Oscar-Nominated Short Films:

https://shorts.tv/theoscarshorts/

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt9684784/videoplayer/vi443726361?ref_=tt_ov_vi

(a very short [1:07] promo for all 3 categories: Animation, Documentary, Live Action)

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/review/oscar-nominated-shorts-2019-live-action-1184345

(a review of the Live Action Shorts)

https://www.npr.org/2019/02/07/691627685/the-2019-animated-short-film-oscar-nominees-reviewed (a review of the Animated Shorts)

https://www.indiewire.com/2019/02/2019-oscar-nominated-documentary-shorts-review-1202041750/ (I didn’t make any commentary above on the Oscar-nominated Documentary

Shorts because I haven’t seen any of them, but here’s one opinion for your edification

—although 2 other predictions I've seen claim Black Sheep will win this prize.)

By the way, if you’re ever at The Hotel California knock on my door—but you know what the check out policy is so be prepared to stay for awhile. Ken

Finally, for the data-oriented among you, Google stats say over the past month (which they seem to measure from right now back 30 days) the total unique hits at this site were 55,288 (as always, we thank all of you for your support with our hopes you’ll continue to be regular readers); below is a snapshot of where and by what means those responses have come from within the previous week: