‘Opera’ stands out among Oscar-nominated animated short films

MOVIE REVIEW

“OSCAR-NOMINATED SHORT FILMS: ANIMATED”

Rated PG-13. At the Coolidge Corner Theatre and Landmark Kendall Square.

Grade: B

Judging from the short animated films nominated for Academy Awards this year, I’d say the field is relatively shallow with one entry truly pushing the boundaries of animated film-making.

“Burrow” from Pixar is typical. The film, written and directed by storyboard artist Madeline Sharafian (“We Bare Bears”), is a throwback to 2D cartoons, this one featuring a female bunny determined to give her home a makeover, complete with crudely drawn plan. But each time she digs, she breaks into a burrow of other animals, including a mole, a badger and an ant colony. The film is mostly amiable and nicely done. But when the rabbit digs into a water supply and endangers everyone’s home, it’s not so amusing or funny. Or is it just that after a year of COVID-19, I’m a little cranky?

“Genius Loci,” the French-language second of the five nominees from director Adrien Merigeau and writers Merigeau and Nicolas Pleskof, is a visually fascinating, if also difficult to follow and distressing, tale of Reine (Nadia Moussa), a young woman of African descent, who is experiencing hallucinations. The visuals are a dreamlike mix of images, signs and symbols, evoking impressionism, cubism, physics and geometry. On her short journey from her friend’s flat across a French city (Paris, presumably), Reine enters a large, cathedral-like space, where she meets a musician. Reine also trashes the flat of her friend Rosie (Georgia Cusack) and endangers Rosie’s infant child. OK, my nerves are shot.

The South Korean-American, computer-generated effort “Opera,” the tour-de-force of the five nominees, is what you’d have if you tried to turn a novel into an museum exhibit. Directed by award-winner Erick Oh, who worked as an animator at Pixar on “Finding Dory” and “Inside Out.” “Opera” is set in a pyramid-shaped, hierarchical world with moving parts and legions of inhabitants busily doing a variety of things, including feeding a giant, using a guillotine to decapitate prisoners and meeting in conference rooms. Imagine an unbelievably elaborate, digital music box. At the lowest level, which looks like this world’s “outdoors,” a war is waged between inhabitants of the left and right side of the pyramid. Oh says he was inspired by the artists Bosch, Michelangelo and Botticelli among others.

The fourth nominee, “If Anything Happens I Love You,” a film with a ghastly relevance, depicts a husband and wife who mourn the death of their 10-year-old daughter in a school shooting. Written and directed by Michael Govier and Will McCormack, this American 2D animated film features black-and-white and color imagery. In the film, the line-drawn parents are alienated from one another, although their “shadow selves,” which are their true emotions, try to get them to reconcile. It is not until their daughter’s shadow self reappears that the living parents remember the joy they all experienced together and make amends. The film is lovely, sad, sentimental and unavoidably maudlin.

From Iceland comes the computer-generated fifth entry, “Yes-People,” a film in which the only word of dialogue is “Yes” (“Ja” in Icelandic). The characters live in an apartment block. One woman reads Proust, while a man shovels snow and a younger male heads off to school to take a test. An older couple engages in some post-retirement sex. Written and directed by Gisli Darri Halldorrson,“Yes-People” is a jolly look at the routine struggle of life. But of the five entries, “Opera” is clearly the mind-blowing standout.

(“Oscar-Nominated Short Films: Animated” contains violence and sexual references.)

from Boston Herald https://ift.tt/3ueFH4r