![]() |
My Nephew Emmett Courtesy of TIFF |
It often happens that the five Oscar nominees for Best Animated Short are significantly stronger than their live action counterparts
are. Such is not the case this year. While there is an air of familiarity to
the quintet of nominees for Best Live Action Short, this year’s Oscar
contenders are a solid group. There isn’t a stinker in the bunch.
The shorts line-up offers a pair of two-handers with The
Eleven O’clock (Dir. Derin Seale; Australia 13 min.) and DeKalb
Elementary (Dir. Reed Van Dyk; USA, 21 min.). These films rely on a
pair of performances apiece as two actors carry their respective situations
through dialogue and screen chemistry. The
Eleven O’clock, the lone comedy among the nominees, basically adapts the
famous “Who’s on First?” routine by Abbott and Costello as two men, played by
Josh Lawson and Damon Herriman, encounter one another in a psychiatrist’s
office. Each man claims to be the doctor and assumes the other the patient
while the helpless temporary secretary (Jessica Wren) simply knows that the
eleven o’clock appointment is a new patient who believes he is a psychiatrist. DeKalb, on the other hand, stars Tarra
Riggs as Cassandra, the administrator of an elementary school who maintains
pressure and courage under fire when an armed assailant (Bo Mitchell) storms
the building and demands she negotiate with the police on his behalf. Both
short films tackle representations of mental illness quite differently with the
former struggling to reconcile the metamorphosis between laughing with and
laughing at a character, and with the latter offering an engrossing study in
empathy. Riggs’ exceptionally strong performance anchors and elevates DeKalb Elementary to deliver a bold and
jarringly realistic portrayal of violence and everyday heroes. It’s one of the
best performances of the year in any film of any length. Rent DeKalb Elementary on Vimeo.
Violence fuels two other nominated shorts, Watu
Wote: All of Us (Dir. Katja Benrath; Germany/Kenya, 22 min.) and My
Nephew Emmett (Dir. Kevin Wilson, Jr.; USA, 22 min.), which won Student
Academy Awards last year for Foreign Film and Narrative work, respectively.
These true crime sagas introduce talented newcomers to the field with their
poignant considerations of violence, grief, and collective healing process
inspired by traumatic events. Watu Wote
whisks viewers to Kenya where Benrath dramatizes an episode in the conflict
between Muslims and Christians in which a bus travelling through the country
was attacked by an army of Islamic extremists. The goons point their guns at
the Christian passengers, while the Muslims on the bus band together to protect
their fellow travellers. Watu Wote is
hopeful in its gripping interpretation of the event with a strong ensemble cast
conveying the conflict of tension, prejudice, and, finally, compassion to
create a powder keg that the film effectively diffuses.
My Nephew Emmett,
finally, deserves to upgrade Wilson’s Student Academy Award to a full-fledged
Oscar with its powerful dramatization of the 1955 murder of Emmett Till, a
fourteen-year-old boy from Chicago who was murdered when he visited family in
Mississippi and whistled the wrong way at a white woman. It's the clear standout. The film sees the
story through the perspective of Till’s uncle Mose (L. B. Williams in a
performance of sensitive and understated greatness) who foresees the brutal act
and waits out the night for the violence he can’t stop from coming. My Nephew Emmett elucidates the same
reflections on race in Mississippi as Dee Rees’ Mudbound does with a final act that echoes the murder of Emmett
Till. Audiences familiar with the feature are bound to draw similar connections
thanks to the breathtaking cinematography by Laura Vallado, which bathes the
screen in powerful hues of blue and orange and makes the short the most
visually compelling and aesthetically sophisticated film of the nominees.
(Vallado will surely join Mudbound DP
Rachel Morrison one day in the class of Oscar-nominated female
cinematographers.) In many ways, My
Nephew Emmett keeps its focus sharp and fixed where Mudbound loses its power in the disjointed array of narratives and
perspectives. Emmett illustrates the
great art of short filmmaking by conveying with vivid poignancy one fateful
night in history by seeing the events through one set of eyes intimately close
to the action, yet powerless to help. What an outstanding work of art.
Which short gets your vote?
The Oscar-nominated
Live Action shorts and Animated Shorts open in Toronto at TIFF Lightbox on Feb. 9 and in Ottawa at
The ByTowne on Feb. 23.