Auf
Der Strecke
(On the Line), a German film, tells the story of a department
store security employee who spends much of his free time (and quite a bit of
work time) pining away for a pretty young woman who works in the book
department of the store. He never speaks to her, of course, but watches her on
the surveillance camera and even rides the same subway that she does so that he
can continue to look at her. You begin to think that this is going to be a
creepy film about a stalker, but then she boards the train with a handsome
young man one night, and she and the young man begin to fight. After she
abruptly leaves the train, the young man is attacked by three young thugs, who
beat him to death. The security guard watches much of this, but he does nothing,
perhaps jealous of the woman's affections for the young man. When the guard
discovers that the young man is her brother, he tries—haltingly—to make amends.
(Those German filmmakers and their sense of guilt...where would they be without
it?) This film has an interesting story and some technical prowess, but I don't
know that it would stand out to me in a field of hundreds of other short films
of similar skill at storytelling and camera work and editing. This is the
longest of the five films at 30 minutes, and it has the most fully developed
plot.
New
Boy,
a film from Ireland, tells the story of a young boy from Africa who arrives at
a grammar school in Ireland, only to be picked on by one of the Irish boys.
Through a series of flashbacks, we discover that the young African boy has left
his home country due to the military's arrest and probably murder of his
father, a schoolteacher. The kids in his new class are an intriguing lot
overall, most of them fitting pretty clear "types." The resolution of
the story is charming, coming as it does on the heels of the most dramatic of
the young boy's flashbacks to Africa. Again, this film is competently made, and
it was fun to hear the Irish accents, but I'm not sure that it would stand out
in a field of short films so distinctly either. It's the shortest of the five,
clocking in at a brisk 11 minutes.
Toyland (Spielzeugland),
is also from Germany, and it mines more familiar territory: the Holocaust. A
young German boy is friends with the Jewish family downstairs; in fact, he and
the son of the Jewish family play the piano together. When he learns that the
Jewish family will be leaving soon, he wants to know why he can't go. When his
mother tries to tell him that they are going to Toyland, that just makes him
all the more excited to join them. What she can't tell him, of course, but what
we all know is that they are on the way to the concentration camps; foolishly,
she makes up a destination that only entices her son rather than discourages
him. On the morning that the Nazis arrive to take the family downstairs into
custody, the young German boy packs his suitcase and tries to join them. Much
of the film is the story of his mother trying to locate him, even going to the
train station and having the officers open the railcar that contains her
neighbors. The payoff for this film is strong, but I won't spoil it for you on
the chance that you might get to enjoy seeing it on your own some day. Like New
Boy, Toyland uses a series of flashbacks to tell its
story, but the German film is more emotionally engrossing, perhaps because of
the more detailed knowledge we have of the cultural context.
Grisen (The Pig)
is a Danish film about an older man who enters a hospital to have surgery; he
has an abscess in his rectum, a fact which he shares with almost everyone he
meets. At first, he is in a hospital room by himself. In his solitude, he
notices a painting on the wall of a pig leaping into a body of water. He
becomes intrigued by the picture and starts to feel like it is a good luck
charm for him. He even likens the expression on the pig's face to the smile on
the Mona Lisa. (Well, it is a rather enigmatic look. The pig's look, I mean.)
He awakens after one of his procedures to see that the painting has been
removed and that another patient has joined him in the room. It turns out that
the other patient is Muslim, and his family has asked for the painting to be
removed because it offends them. A series of misadventures follows, including
the hanging of a picture of a moose as an alternative. Frustrated, the elderly
man calls in his daughter, the lawyer, and asks her to become involved. It's
all rather comic, yet each "side" still makes an intriguing case
regarding the limits of tolerance. The way the plot is resolved is the most
ironic of all five films, but it too should really be experienced firsthand.
Manon
Sur Le Bitume
(Manon on the Asphalt), a French film, is perhaps the most
challenging in terms of its structure. It begins with a series of images of various
people going about their day. Then the central character of Manon hops on her
bike and rides to meet someone. She is struck by a car and, while she fades in
and out of consciousness, begins to think about the various people in her life
and what she last said to them and key memories of their times together and how
they might react to her death. All of these people are, of course, the ones we
saw in the opening sequence. The film ends with a series of images involving
the same people, but I'm not certain that the narrative has been fully or
satisfactorily resolved when that sequence begins. As intriguing as this film
sounds, I'm not sure that it is executed as skillfully as it could have been.
Oscar Winner: Toyland.
Perhaps it was the darker theme of the German short film that made it stand out
more. It is the most resonant of the films in terms of its emotional impact.
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