So, way late for the Oscars (one manifestation of why 3CM has a DK diary series with this title), a Friday Night at the Movies diary about the 5 nominated short subject live action films for the 2008 awards:
(1) Auf Der Strecke (On the Line; Germany/Switzerland)
(2) A New Boy (Ireland)
(3) Spielzeugland (Toyland; Germany)
(4) Grisen (The Pig; Denmark)
(5) Manon Sur Le Bitume (Manon on the Pavement; France)
This order is actually the order in which they were shown in a feature release of all the nominated short live action films. What decided this topic for me was an off-hand comment a friend made when we met up, after I’d seen the films, but he had not. When I mentioned the subject matter of one of the films, he instantly said: "That one's going to win". As it turned out.....
.....he was right, as Spielzeugland did win the best live action short. So how did he know that, without having seen it or any of the other shorts? His logic was simple, roughly paraphrased thus:
"The Academy always goes with the Holocaust film."
Kind of cynical, but in this case, justified by the result. Dana Stevens made the same point in a recent back-and-forth on Slate with Troy Patterson here:
"I guess Ricky Gervais, whose presentation at the Globes last week was the ceremony's high point, was right: Do a Holocaust film, and the awards will come."
Or as Patterson said to Stevens later on:
"With The Reader as the rule-proving exception, I do not bet against Holocaust movies."
On their own terms, each of the short films was good, and any one of them would have made a perfectly fine winner, IMHO. I wouldn't necessarily have said that any one was particularly mind-blowing, but that's OK. In this world, "good" suffices, and any creative work is not necessarily all wonderful or all awful. With that, some thoughts on each, but necessarily limited in scope, for those who haven’t seen them, in that I can't give away too much of the plot points:
- Auf Der Strecke: the most morally ambiguous of the 5, at least to me. Rolf is a security guard at a department store, the guy who watches all the camera monitors to look out for shoplifters. He is attracted to Sarah, a book section employee, whom he can observe with the security cameras in said section, but can't quite summon the nerve to ask her out. They both ride the same tram line at night. On one ride home, Rolf sees Sarah with another guy get on the tram. He later sees them have an argument, and Sarah storms off the train, leaving the guy there. The security guard has a smug look on his face after that, but then some punks on the tram give the other guy crap. He doesn't want to get involved, so he gets off the tram ASAP.
Only later does he learn who that guy was, and what happened after getting off the tram. The movie veers off into a portrait of how Rolf and Sarah deal with the aftermath, because she doesn't know that he could have intervened and changed events. You're wondering when she'll find out, and what will happen as a result. However, the ending retains considerable ambiguity, and a sense of things not yet fully played out.
- New Boy: New Boy: based on a story by Roddy Doyle, this one is perhaps the funniest of the 5, although the humor is based in 1st graders being their 1st grade selves. The plot tells of Joseph, a young African orphan starting off in an Irish elementary school, having to deal with being a dark-skinned guy in a sea of white faces, including the class troublemaker ("You are so dead"). It flashes back to happier school days back in Africa, where Joseph's father was the teacher and the school was a lot more respectful. However, one of his memories is when the country’s troops came for his dad, and he managed to hide in time before the troops....well, the dad didn't do so well.
Joseph fights back against the troublemaker, which of course lands all of them in trouble with the teacher. One would think that this would lead to a simple "Can't we all just get along?" moralizing conclusion. Oddly enough, the conclusion actually does give a hint of the two of them maybe taking the first step to getting along, but not by the teacher forcing them to shake hands or anything like that. The treatment is more in the spirit of "boys will be boys", and how they react to their being in trouble.
- Spielzeugland: the winner, and yes, the Holocaust-themed short film. The story tells of two families, one Jewish (the Silbersteins), one not (the Meissners), each with young boys who take piano lessons together. The Silbersteins will soon be deported to a concentration camp, and to protect her son Heinrich from the full truth, Frau Meissner makes up a story that the Silbersteins will be going to a place called "Toyland". Heinrich then says that if his friend David Silberstein goes there, he wants to join them, which of course horrifies his mom.
Inevitably, the day comes when the Silbersteins are taken away for deportation. Heinrich then disappears, presumably having joined the Silbersteins, and his mom frantically tries to track him down. However, there is a twist in the tale, which the suitably imaginative among you might be able to imagine on your own. This is certainly the least morally ambiguous of the set, although the narrative is just sufficiently non-linear to keep your mind active.
- Grisen: since this is Daily Kos, this one is actually the most "political" of the 5. It's also humorous, but in a drier, wrier (more Danish?) way. The story is of an old man, Asbjørn Jensen, who is admitted to hospital because of pains in his....well, area where the sun don’t shine. He walks with a cane, and at one point, tells his daughter more or less that "people my age who go into the hospital don’t come out". The humor in the story comes from a silly painting on the hospital wall of a pig leaping over a fence (in the spirit of dogs playing poker). The picture actually makes Asbjørn happy, and he thinks of it as a good luck charm.
One day, waking up, Asbjørn looks at the wall, and...the painting isn’t there. It turns out that sharing his room, starting that day, is another older man, a Muslim. In the light of the Danish Mohammed cartoons incident a few years back, you now see why this one is the most political of the 5. Asbjørn tries to get back the painting, even threatening legal action, but no luck. Even his daughter Mona, a lawyer, says that there’s no legal basis for action. Asbjørn draws a pencil sketch of the pig jumping over the fence, and has it tacked where the painting was.
However, one morning, the Muslim patient's son then walks up to the sketch, takes it from the wall without asking anyone, and crumples it up. Mona sees this, and says: "Now we have a case." So the lawyer daughter and the Muslim son get into an argument about cultural sensitivity, with the hospital staff caught in the middle. However, again, in a contrast of Hollywood vs. "old Europe", the dilemma of the cultural conflict is not resolved, but simply left for the audience to ponder the issues. At the very end, the two patients start to get to know each other, when the Muslim patient asks Asbjørn to describe the surroundings. The Muslim patient came in for cataract surgery, but the procedure didn't work out, and he still can't see.
(I have thoughts on who's right in this situation, but will save those for the tip jar, for those who care.)
- Manon Sur Le Bitume: this is the most self-consciously romantic and lyrical, but in its way, also the saddest of the 5. This is because of how Manon winds up "on the pavement", after she starts the film on her bike. You don't see how it happens, but suffice it to say that unlike her, it ain't cute. When "on the pavement", Manon's mind reels and she begins to think about her friends, her mom, her boyfriend, her past, and future possibilities - or not. However, because of how the film is put together, along with the Madeleine Peyroux on the soundtrack, any sentiment or schmaltz is not laid on with too obvious a trowel. Subtler trowel than usual, perhaps. And since this is a French film, there has to be some nudity and sex, just a little. The film does not close out the situation "fully", so you're not completely sure what happens after the credits roll, but.....
If you haven't seen the films, and they are running in your city, they’re definitely worth your time (NYT review here if you're interested). The whole set runs 94 minutes. If not, and there’s no chance that they’ll play your burg, maybe on DVD (or YouTube down the line, who knows).
So, open discussion time for the shorts above, or other movies you've seen lately. Have fun, kiddies....