Proud Parents & Conflicted Cowboys: 2017’s Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films

2017’s Oscar contenders for Best Animated Short Films are an eclectic bunch. The wide range of animation styles and techniques on display are a brilliant advert for the possibilities of the medium. There’s also a tremendous variety of stories, ranging from the tragic, to the downright adorable.

And the nominees are:

Piper

Piper was the short film shown before last year’s Finding Dory, and as such has undoubtedly been the most widely watched. It’s a sweet little story about a baby sandpiper whose fear of the ocean means he isn’t able to feed himself with the tiny shellfish that live along the water’s edge. With some gentle prodding from its mother, the baby sandpiper manages to overcome its fears.

Piper is arguably the frontrunner, and it’s a real shame. It’s not that it’s a bad film. The director, Alan Barillaro, took a painstaking effort in researching the lives, looks and habits of sandpipers, and the result is a beautifully animated short that appears photorealistic. The beach and the aquamarine waves are particularly stunning.

It’s also adorable. The little baby sandpiper is absurdly cute, even more so when its feathers get all mussed from the waves. The generic, but meaningful, message of ‘face your fears’ adds to the crowd-pleasing factor.

Compared to the other four shorts, though, Piper is easily the most throwaway. It doesn’t have anywhere close to the emotional weight of Pearl or Borrowed Time, and though its visuals are flawless, they aren’t as innovative as Blind Vaysha or Pear Cider and Cigarettes. It’s cute, and technically accomplished, but that’s about it.

Blind Vaysha

Narrated by Caroline Dhavernas (of Hannibal fame), Blind Vaysha is the story of a young girl with one eye that can only see the past, and another that can only see the future. She is unable to see anything that is happening in the present, so despite her vision, she is effectively blind.

Of the five short films in competition, Blind Vaysha has the most expressionistic style of animation. Bulgarian director Theodore Ushev is an expert linocut block printer, and has digitally recreated the technique for this film.

I was surprised to learn that Blind Vaysha is not a centuries-old folk tale, but a recent story by Ushev’s friend, and famed poet, Georgi Gospodinov. It’s a modern fable about the necessity of living in the present and how easy it is to see the past as a comforting haven and the future as an apocalyptic nightmare. In these politically tumultuous days, it seems very timely indeed.

I didn’t like the ending, when the narrator breaks the fourth wall and directly addresses the audience. It felt unnecessary; the moral of the story was already abundantly clear. For the most part though, it’s a visually striking, thought-provoking tale.

Pearl

Over six minutes, we watch the relationship of a girl and her father from when she is a young child, through a difficult adolescence, and onto a successful, happy adulthood. We see this all take place from a vantage point in the front seat of their family car.

The story of this short film reminded me of a couple of adverts I’ve seen recently. The first has an almost identical plot, though it’s live action, not animation. The second transposes the same idea to a ferris wheel.

So it’s not exactly a unique tale, but the reason it gets retold so much is that it’s so moving in its simplicity and ubiquity. Everyone grows up and feels nostalgia for their childhood. I can only imagine the extra layer of emotion you would feel watching this short as a parent.

The animation technique is perhaps the most intriguing of this year’s selection. Director Patrick Osborne developed the film from a virtual reality short; as such it feels as if you are actually in the car with these characters (I’d recommend viewing the film here, on a mobile phone or tablet, and you can watch it in 360 degrees). Together with its appealing neon-pastel colour palette, and lovely soundtrack, Pearl is my favourite of the nominees.

Borrowed Time

An aging sheriff stands at the edge of a cliff and recalls a traumatic event from decades earlier.

Borrowed Time is the most emotional of the five shorts; I’ll admit it, it made me cry. After Piper, this is the short whose animation most resembles something you’d see in a children’s film (directors Andrew Coats and Lou Hamou–Lhadj both work for Pixar, though they made this film independently). That makes it all the more jarring when we see the graphically depicted, horrifying incident occur.

The landscape of Borrowed Time adds to the film’s melancholy, dream-like beauty. Taking place on a ridge overlooking a vast desert valley, with the sky full of threatening storm clouds, there doesn’t seem to be another person in the whole world. As the sun sets on our devastated sheriff, we are left to ponder the lasting nature of grief, guilt and regret. No mean feat for a six-minute short film.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes

This is the only one of this year’s nominees to be based on a true story. As well as writing and animating, Robert Valley (you might recognise his animation style from the music videos he did for the Gorillaz) narrates the story of his relationship with childhood friend, Techno. Despite being a promising athlete as a boy, Techno quickly finds himself falling in with a bad crowd, and that leads to a lifetime problem with alcohol addiction. Though Robert does all he can to help, it’s not enough.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes is a strange case; it’s so much longer than the other films that it’s almost surprising to find them in the same category. All the other films are between five and eight minutes. Pear Cider and Cigarettes is thirty-five minutes. That’s over 400% more time to tell its story and flesh out the characters, and it seems a little unfair.

That aside, there’s plenty to recommend Pear Cider and Cigarettes. It has the look of a graphic novel, but its movement is dynamic and eminently cinematic. Some of the sequences, like when Robert is recalling Techno’s youthful ability to run faster than anyone else, or when he’s recounting his daily visits to the hospital, are mind-bogglingly beautiful. This is all particularly impressive when you consider that this short was made entirely on Photoshop.

Though Pear Cider and Cigarettes is essentially a sad film, Robert Valley’s wry narration and astute observations add some valuable levity. It’s already the longest nominee by far, but I would have been quite happy to watch it for even longer.

Which short film are you rooting for?
https://www.youtube.com/embed/L2iB8OE8CwQ