Bestia (2021) dir. by Hugo Covarrubias and Tevo Díaz. Chile, 15 mins.
It’s about that time again. Scheduled at the end of March, the 94th Academy Awards is another dwindling ceremonial event where winners of certain categories will be not be announced via live telecast. This includes all of the short film categories — animated, live action, and documentary. However, in this space, I’ll review all nominations and make them feel more unique than the inevitable jokes about who The Worst Person in the World is. Starting Friday, February 25, the Coolidge Corner Theatre will be playing all nominated short films in their designated categories. Watching movies is fun, but betting during awards season is another kind where know-it-alls can get immersed and wrecked. Let’s get on it and argue!
INTRODUCTION
We have finally reached this point. Not only has Disney/Pixar been shut out of this year’s nominations, but children are now being turned away at the doors. Long gone are the days of marketable anthropomorphic creatures ready for wholesale by the end of the awards ceremony. The animated shorts program is Rated R, decorated by some of the following themes: nudity, sexual content, sexual assault, explicit harm to animals, and bestiality (you sure read that right!). And then there’s Robin Robin, a British musical about a baby robin adopted by a family of mice.
Similarly to last year, the animated shorts program features an assortment of styles and themes that makes it a bit harder to know which way the wind would blow. Affairs of the Art, the supposed frontrunner, reminds me of certain illustrated picture books where humans are drawn to humorous means while The Windshield Wiper, from the mind of Love and Robots contributor Alberto Mielgo, looks like the post-breakup portfolio of a very suave graphic designer. If we were to take a poll of the general population who saw the program and let them choose their favorite, I’d bet there wouldn’t be a clear lead. Let’s take a look at this year’s nominations for Best Animated Short Films.
CONTENDERS
- Affairs of the Art (dir. Joanna Quinn and Les Mills | UK/Canada, 16 mins | full video) – The short film follows Quinn’s fictional recurring character Beryl, a woman of abnormal pleasures, and the introduction to her equally deviating family members.
- Bestia (dir. Hugo Covarrubias and Tevo Díaz | Chile, 15 mins | trailer) – Loosely modeled after Chilean government agent Íngrid Olderöck, Bestia chances a psychological insight to an infamous torturer during the country’s dictatorship.
- Boxballet (dir. Anton Dyakov | Russia, 15 mins | trailer) – A boxer and a ballerina fall in love despite the circumstances and pressures of their work.
- Robin Robin (dir. Dan Ojari and Mikey Please | UK, 32 mins | trailer) – A robin sets out to prove that she can be a good mouse. What more is there to say?
- The Windshield Wiper (dir. Alberto Mielgo and Leo Sanchez | USA/Spain, 14 mins | trailer) – Through the philosophical musing, “What is love?”, The Windshield Wiper is a series of vignettes in how love permeates society.
The Windshield Wiper (2021) dir. Alberto Mielgo and Leo Sanchez. USA/Spain, 14 mins.
THOUGHTS
Despite my saying that the overall consensus on this year’s winner for the animated shorts may not be crystal clear, my opinions sure are. Let me knock a few things out of the way. The Windshield Wiper is a sharp technicolor display of human observation, but I could not get into the shoehorned idea that love is there, but we’re too busy and blind to see it. This short film had the opportunity to bring home a fantastic point if it had focused on a few people, but the revolving door of characters and relationships without a threading narrative (even a voiceover would have sufficed) made it seem hard to connect with. That being said, it was probably the most polished-looking out of the five and would probably win if the audience was also favoring Dune for Best Picture (I’ll let you calculate the probabilities on that).
Robin Robin was poster-cute but not memorable, resembling last year’s Burrow. To be honest, I would be shocked if it won, even with Gillian Anderson voicing a cat. My only peripheral knowledge of British animation is Paddington (don’t @ me about whether Paddington is animation, or to remind me of other animations I could be blatantly missing), so maybe it’s sorta similar to that. Anyways, I could not get over how a mouse was able to hold up a baby robin in its paw like it was a loaf of bread. That should be the representative screenshot of victory in this awards.
If The Windshield Wiper showed up to the ceremony in a suit and tie and Robin Robin in an adorable bucket hat and yellow raincoat, the other films dressed like they attend Euphoria High (in the sense of wacky variety, rather than like Maddy or Kat). As mentioned before, Affairs of the Art feels very unapologetic in a Lena Dunham memoir sort of way. If The Windshield Wiper is a gallery of modelesque strangers, Affairs is a catalogue of every damn quirk an individual could have. I was unfamiliar with Quinn’s work, so I had initially thought that the backyard taxidermy and the morbid fascination for torture was based on true events because it seemed unlikely to have jammed all of that in there. But all of that has been jammed in there, and it’s up to you to decide if that jam’s to your liking.
Boxballet might seem like the conventional depiction of a love story — in this one, it’s between a principal ballerina and a rugged boxer — that would make Disney plotlines feel seen, but it’s not as saccharine as it seems. The ballerina faces pressure in her work and from the gaze of her male director. The boxer — well, the boxer is just happy to be in her presence. Unfortunately, I don’t know how much attention it’ll receive given the circumstances from Russia (rumor has it that it wasn’t going to be shown in theaters), but I would say that this short feels the most balanced.
Boxballet (2021) dir. Anton Dyakov. Russia, 15 mins.
Lastly, Bestia. The film that I initially dreaded watching because after seeing Affairs first, I knew that this film had to be the one about bestiality (for your information, it is straight up bestiality). The subject matter is gruesome, so much so that it’s a shock to the system to have a semi-horror exploration of a torturer’s psyche nominated. Every year, there’s always talk between crafted movies and memorable movies. Bestia falls into the films that I’ll remember forever, because it simply leaves an imprint onto the brain that experiences fear. I’m using a lot of words to really say that the film is fucked up, and I recommend everyone in a stable state of mind to watch it.
PREDICTIONS
WHAT SHOULD WIN: Bestia
WHAT WILL WIN: You know what? Bestia. Maybe it’ll actually be Affairs of the Art, but I’m feeling feisty.
Watch this space for our coverage of the nominated live-action and documentary shorts!
The 2022 Oscar-Nominated short films are now playing at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. In case it’s not obvious, leave the kids at home.
