The seven-minute Finnish Do I have to Take Care of Everything? offers a delightful narrative twist, but it is unclear why clever writing alone would warrant inclusion of this simple, bite-sized, sketch-like sequence in the collection of best shorts of the year. The Voorman Problem, a UK comedy film, stars Martin Freeman as a prison psychiatrist talking with an inmate who has declared himself to be God. The humor is sharp, the dialogue has momentum, and the drama builds nicely (towards the end, an eerie aura is created through the usage of a flickering light over the inmate’s head), but the film ends quite suddenly and without any sort of resolution. It misses the opportunity to truly address its original and engrossing premise in a satisfying way, instead taking the easy way out of its masterfully crafted atmosphere by cutting the film short. Helium, a Danish creation, tells the story of a janitor who helps a terminally ill boy cope with death by convincing the boy of the existence of an alternative heaven, a mystifying realm called “Helium.” What struck me most about the film was its refusal to focus on the medical aspect of the boy’s illness. It is a purely human story throughout, focusing on the mind, not the body. Another of Helium’s strengths is its pacing, elegantly setting up situations without much expository dialogue and moving fluidly between uplifting and unsettling moments. Unfortunately, it too often comes off as excessively melodramatic and fails to set up any particularly memorable moments.
The two remaining nominees are the only two films that induced strong emotional reactions in me. The Spanish That Wasn’t Me follows three Western doctors who travel to an African country only to be kidnapped and one of the child soldiers who is instructed to execute them. I was enthralled by the cinematography: it is handheld, but in a way that is drastically different from the type of handheld used by prominent cinematographers like Barry Ackroyd (United 93, Captain Phillips). The frenetic camera movements somehow maintain a sense of deliberateness that I’ve never seen before. The film feels like a pastel painting with visible strokes; the shots are thick, beautiful, imperfect brush strokes. That Wasn’t Me’s fatal flaw, however, is that it in many ways comes off as generic in its depictions of atrocities, which, to be fair, do have a disturbing verisimilitude, but lack any distinguishing details or embellishments that could make them particularly memorable. Rounding out the list is the French film Just Before Losing Everything, which follows a mother and her two children as they prepare to flee from her abusive husband. While the film succeeded in keeping me on the edge of my seat with its palpable tension, the characters are underdeveloped, and a plethora of plot elements are confusing and unnecessary.
When I think of excellent short films, I think of the small, memorable details or the particular iconography that makes them unique. I think of the scrabble letters arranged as “DOME” meant to spell “DO ME” in Luke Matheny’s God of Love. I think of the mesmerizing bowling alley dance scene and visually stunning almond bokeh of traffic lights in Shawn Christensen’s Curfew. I think of Ronald McDonald as a criminal troublemaker in François Alaux’s Logorama. All five of this year’s live action nominees lack one of these distinguishing sparks. Let’s hope next year’s lineup is more enchanting.