Best One-Reel Short Subject of 1940

London Can Take It! is a short documentary about the German blitz on London during the early years of World War II. Quentin Reynolds, an American war correspondent, serves as the narrator for a series of images of the kinds of preparations that the citizens are making in advance of the nightly attacks on their city. As the sirens wail, they close their curtains and relocate to shelters. From 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., much of the city goes into hiding as the German planes bomb different sectors. The next morning, the destruction of various sections of the city is heartbreaking to witness, but the Londoners go about cleaning up their neighborhoods and going back to work and even getting ready for another cycle of attacks. The film, produced by England’s GPO (General Post Office) Film Unit for the Ministry of Information, is meant to be a testament to the resilience of the people of London, and it is an effective, understated piece of propaganda. The film presents what should be disturbing images in a very matter-of-fact way, and the narration by Reynolds is also quite low-key. Despite all of this, though, watching the film is quite an emotional experience because you get to see the strength of the English people as they live their lives in the midst of the horrors of war. It’s an inspiring, powerful film even though it only lasts about 9 minutes.

More about Nostradamus is really rather less about the famed predictor of the future than it is about the predictions he made that seem to match what was going on in Europe just prior to American involvement in World War II. The short begins with a nobleman leading a group of grave robbers to Nostradamus’s tomb on July 2, 1626, sixty years after Nostradamus’s death. He learns the hard way to follow the warning on the tomb, “Encroach not upon the repose of the one lying here,” as it collapses on him, killing him just as was predicted on a scroll included in the tomb. That’s supposed to be a shocker of an opening and perhaps a way to solidify the idea of Nostradamus’s accuracy. A short biography follows, highlighted by his prediction that a young cleric will one day become pope. When it comes true, everyone goes back to read the thousands of predictions in his Prophetic Centuries. The film then gives a series of examples to demonstrate further the accuracy of his prognostications: the defeat of the Spanish Armada, the creation and eventual failure of the League of Nations, and a host of World War I events. It’s the slipperiness of the language that allows people to think that Nostradamus was so spot-on with his predictions. Of course, “fishes of steel” could be submarines and “machines of flying fire” could be airplanes, and Germany could be the “miserable republic usurped by a new leader,” Adolf Hitler. This is when the “real” focus of the film becomes more apparent: the predictions about the situation in Europe at the time of the film’s completion in 1940. Vichy France and the bombing of England are among his predictions (if, of course, you accept the interpretations of his language as applying to them), and the film then uses the prediction that the “daughter of the English Isles” will help to end the war. A shot of the Statue of Liberty that ends the film couldn’t be more obvious about its plea to have the United States fulfill its “destiny” by entering the war. The use of both re-enactments of historical events and contemporary newsreel footage is quite effective, and the narration increases in intensity and emotion as the film progresses, reflecting the heightening concern over the events in Europe at the time.

Quicker ‘n a Wink was the second (and last) Pete Smith Specialties entry to receive an Academy Award. It features the work of Dr. Harold E. Edgerton at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who invented the process of stroboscopic (“super high speed”) photography. Edgerton’s process allows us to see in slow motion the kinds of actions like the whir of fan blades and the breaking of a soap bubble that occur too quickly for us to be able to examine them with the naked eye or even to capture with the conventional photographic process. We get to see some unusual effects such as a bullet shattering a light bulb and a golf ball punching a hole in a telephone book. At times, there are comparisons between Edgerton’s photographic process and “standard” photography, such as the moment when a football player’s foot comes into contact with a football. The film (and Edgerton, I suppose, by extension) spends a great deal of time using milk. We see the coronas formed by milk drops and the tall spire created when a golf ball drops into a vat of milk. It was intriguing to see how a cat’s tongue curls when it drinks milk, but not all of the images are equally interesting. The beating wings of a hummingbird are fascinating to watch, but getting to see a dentist’s drill in slow motion is hardly a highlight for most people. As a scientific document, this short captures the beginning of the use of high-speed photography to study the details of motion too quick to discern with only our eyes. Even though it’s really just a series of shots, Quicker ‘n a Wink remains a fascinating historical film.

Siege provides quite shocking timely footage of the devastating German attack on Warsaw, Poland, at the start of World War II. It’s a simple and powerful series of images of the kind of damage that was inflicted upon the city by the German bombers. Journalist Julien H. Bryan arrived in Warsaw just after the end of the first week of bombing and stayed for two weeks to witness a series of air raids and the destruction that followed. The German goal was to destroy the bridges to and from the city, but that never happened. What resulted instead was the loss of many lives and homes and buildings such as churches and hospitals. We get to see the bread lines for limited supplies of food as well as the gutted structures and the bullet holes that riddle walls.  Incendiary bombs caused fires almost every day, and families became accustomed to moving their possessions around the city to avoid having them destroyed. Bryan’s almost day-by-day account is quite moving. His story of the maternity hospital where the patients and their four-day-old babies had to be moved to the basement is quite heartwarming, and his story about how quickly the women re-entered a field to dig potatoes after an air raid had killed some of their fellow citizens is astonishing. He appears in the footage sometimes himself, talking to the residents and recounting their testimony for the viewer. Interestingly, the footage itself almost didn’t survive the attacks. Bryan and his small crew had to find a place to get it developed quickly before it was destroyed or rendered unable to be developed. This film was released two years before American involvement in World War II, and it seems clearly designed to increase U.S. support for entering the war effort by showing the suffering that the people of Warsaw and Poland and the rest of Europe endured under the German attacks.

Oscar Winner: The Academy selected the only entry that didn’t involve some aspect of World War II, Quicker ‘n a Wink. Perhaps there was some concern in Hollywood over supporting the war so early after its inception.

My Choice: I would pick either London Can Take It! or Siege instead. Both deal with the aftermath of the German attack on a city. However, Siege is more likely to invoke pity based upon the kinds of images that it shares, and London Can Take It! leaves viewers with perhaps a more upbeat feeling about the strength of those undergoing the bombings. Both had to be very effective in building American sentiment for supporting the countries involved in what would come to be known as World War II.  

Casablanca (1943)

Since its release, Casablanca has become engulfed in as much nostalgia and mythology as any film ever made. Set before the U.S. involvement in World War II, it takes place in French Morocco during the era of Vichy France. Much of the action takes place in and around Rick’s Café Americain, whose owner is played to world-weary perfection by Humphrey Bogart. As the saying goes, “everyone comes to Rick’s,” and that’s certainly the case with the French, Moroccans, Germans, Russians, Bulgarians, Italians, and others who frequent the café. The importance of what transpires over the course of the film is less about what happens, honestly, and more about the interactions between sharply drawn characters. Explaining the magic of Casablanca is almost impossible because it is such an exemplar of how each of the pieces is perfect on its own and contributes somewhat unexpectedly to the greatness of the whole.

The plot is both engaging and engrossing. It is a love story, a war movie, and a suspense film all at once. The premise is rather simple: One of the greatest of the Czechoslovakia Resistance leaders, Victor Laszlo (played by Paul Henreid), is coming to Morocco in search of two letters of transit that will ensure safe passage for him and his wife to Lisbon, Portugal, and then America. The letters are among the greatest of film MacGuffins. They serve as a central focus to the plot and everyone wants to find these letters, but really we are more intrigued by what appear at first to be a series of subplots. For example, the love triangle between Bogart’s Rick, Ingrid Bergman’s Ilsa, and Henreid’s Victor keeps viewers wondering whether Ilsa will stay with her husband, the noble and respected Victor, or go with the man she loved in Paris, Rick. Given that Rick can at times be excessively cruel to Ilsa, you might think the choice is obvious, but Bergman (who was nominated as Best Actress in a Leading Role for a different film in 1943, For Whom the Bell Tolls) reveals just how difficult the choice truly is. Indeed, the romantic plot is what propels much of the main narrative of the film.

There’s also a lively subplot involving the friendship between Rick and Capt. Renault (the great Claude Rains, stealing the film whenever he appears on screen). They are often at odds with each other, such as when Rick helps a young wife gather enough funds to avoid Renault’s planned advances on her in exchange for passage out of Casablanca. Renault understands how to survive, though, and he admires Rick’s perseverance even though he doesn’t know all of the café owner’s background. There’s some intriguing wordplay exchanged between the two men, and they sometimes come across more as a romantic couple than just friends. And then there’s Renault’s description of Rick: “Rick is the kind of man that… well, if I were a woman, and I were not around, I should be in love with Rick.” It wouldn’t take much to tease out the playful homoeroticism of their relationship in the film.

For the most part, the plot is rather linear. However, the narrative makes very effective use of a flashback to Rick and Ilsa in Paris before the Germans took over the city. It shows such a sharp contrast in personality to the man Bogart plays in the  contemporary timeline. Seeing how much in love they were before the war separated them reveals how a man who was once on the side of rebels and patriots could feel like he has lost everything, including his concern about what happens to himself. The screenplay also features  other brief powerful moments too, such as when Laszlo has the band play the “Marseillaise” loudly to drown out the Germans singing in the café, a rousing threat to German authority and power. And then there are lovely little interchanges between Yvonne and Sasha that serve as little moments of comic relief. Even at a somewhat brisk 102 minutes, the film takes the time to develop even small moments as embellishments to the main plot.

Casablanca also has one of the greatest casts ever assembled, particularly in supporting roles. Bogart and Bergman are at their best here, and the camera truly loves Bergman. Watch as her face changes during the flashback set in Paris; it’s very clear that something has changed for her. Or watch the rapturous way that she listens to Dooley Wilson playing “As Time Goes By.” Even when silent, Bergman is so very emotionally expressive. Henreid is solid, but he does sometimes play Laszlo as more of an ideal than an actual man. I’ve already mentioned Rains and his great work here (perhaps the best work he ever did in a long and distinguished career), but the rest of the supporting players were some of the best character actors in Hollywood. Just consider Sydney Greenstreet as the duplicitous Ferrari, the owner of the rival Blue Parrot; Peter Lorre at his oiliest and most unctuous as Ugarti, the thief who initially stole the letters of transit; Conrad Veidt as the venomous German Major Strasser; and S.Z. Sakall as Carl, the sentimental waiter at the café. It’s a series of beautifully modulated performances.

The film also has some of the most quoted (and most quotable) lines in film history. The screenplay by the Epstein Brothers (Julius and Philip G.) and Howard Koch features sharp, incisive, and witty dialogue. It’s a delight to watch over and over, and repeated viewings always reveal new insights, new aspects of the rich intricacies of the interchanges between characters. The final sequence at the airport is justifiably hailed as a masterpiece of closure, and you’d be hard pressed to find a monologue that compares with Bogart’s interchange with Bergman as the audience waits to see whether or not he will join her. And you should always correct anyone who misquotes Ilsa: “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Times Go By.” No one in the film says, “Play it again,” but there’s no need to do so.

Many of the lines have justifiably been cited as perfectly written. Just a few brief samples illustrate the clever nature of the screenplay’s use of language:

·         “I don’t mind a parasite. I object to a cut-rate one.”

·         “I stick my neck out for nobody.”

·         “I remember every detail. The Germans wore gray, you wore blue.”

·         “I told my men to be especially destructive. You know how that impresses Germans.”

Those are, certainly, lesser known examples, but if you’ve watched the film, you are already familiar with “Here’s looking at you, kid” and “I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.” Even if you haven’t watched the film, you likely have heard some reference to its dialogue, such as the phrase “the usual suspects.”

All of the components here add up to represent the very best of classical Hollywood studio filmmaking. Finding out that none of the film was shot on location doesn’t detract from its impact. The backlot at Warner Brothers and the Van Nuys Airport wouldn’t necessarily remind anyone of an exotic African city, but here they ably work to depict the café and its environs. Learning that Bogart and Bergman weren’t the original choices for the leads doesn’t detract from the pleasure of their performances here, either. The studios controlled a lot of people’s lives during that era, thanks to very restrictive contracts, so when you were assigned to work on a film, you did so.  It’s the final product that has deservedly endured as a classic even though no one might have expected it to be so when they were making it.

One side note: In case you’re wondering why “As Time Goes By” wasn’t nominated for the Best Original Song, it wasn’t written for Casablanca. It was actually written for a Broadway musical from eleven years earlier, Everybody’s Welcome. It took Casablanca to popularize the song and make it one of the most memorable movie songs of all time, but oddly enough, it’s actually not a film song at all.

Oscar Wins: Outstanding Motion Picture, Best Director (Michael Curtiz), and Best Screenplay

Other Nominations: Best Actor in a Leading Role (Humphrey Bogart), Best Actor in  Supporting Role (Claude Rains), Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Film Editing, and Best Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture 

Citizen Kane (1941)

At its heart, Citizen Kane is a fascinating and accomplished mystery movie whose plot is an attempt to sum up a man’s life by examining the people and events that are central to his existence. It’s a remarkable jigsaw puzzle—a clever metaphor that is reflected throughout the film—giving the viewer pieces of the title character’s life but never the complete picture of who he is or was. Wealthy newspaper tycoon Charles Foster Kane (played by Orson Welles, who also directed, produced, and co-wrote the film) dies at the start of the film, and ostensibly, the rest of the narrative is a series of interviews and flashbacks that viewers must use to try assemble into a coherent story. The film has deservedly been hailed as one of the greatest ever made, and every element of it (plot, acting, cinematography, etc.) is first-rate.

Early in the film, a News on the March newsreel gives some highlights of Kane’s public life, but the dissatisfaction with that version of events prompts the quest that makes up much of the rest of the narrative. We never learn any information about Kane directly. All of the details are presented from the perspective of various supporting characters, and none of them are particularly reliable as narrators. Mr. Bernstein (Everett Sloane), Kane’s business manager, is a sycophant who is always loyal to his employer. Kane’s second wife, Susan Alexander Kane (Dorothy Comingore), is a resentful drunk who has twice suffered public embarrassment due to Kane’s actions. His friend Jedidiah Leland (Joseph Cotton) doesn’t speak with Kane for years after the publisher fires him. Walter Parks Thatcher (George Coulouris), the banker who sparred repeatedly with Kane over his expenditures, has already died, but we still learn his opinions from unpublished memoirs in his library, perhaps the most intriguing way that the film calls into question the reliability of people’s descriptions of others. Even Raymond (Paul Stewart), the butler who speaks to the reporters at the film’s end, only knew him later in life and cannot truly shed much light on who Kane is.

Interestingly, Welles as Kane doesn’t appear in the film for almost 25 minutes. Welles, a young man who was making the transition from theater to film, has to progress from a young, dashing man interested in conquering the world to an old, tired man who has lost everything and everyone important to him. Welles is perhaps more successful in portraying the older Kane, but he is ably supported by a uniformly great supporting cast. Agnes Moorehead as Kane’s mother has a relatively small part but is impressive as always, able to convey a wealth of emotion with only the slightest of facial expressions. Ruth Warrick as Kane’s first wife, Emily, gets a great humorous sequence involving a series of meals at the family table. Cotton brings a great charm and sense of humor to his part as Leland; Cotton was, in my opinion, always somewhat underrated as an actor. The greatest revelation, though, is Comingore as Susan. Whether she’s playing sensitive and weak or shrill and strong, she’s mesmerizing. The film requires her to portray both an inept opera singer and a drunken nightclub owner wistful and bitter about her years with Kane, and Comingore excels at depicting every aspect of the character.

The film also features amazing art direction, set decoration, editing, and cinematography. Much has already been written about the technical mastery of Welles and his colleagues, such as the use of deep focus, for example, but the film’s skillful use of these techniques is perhaps best enjoyed by looking at specific instances. Take the opening sequence’s use of a series of dissolves to move viewers from a golf course to a zoo to a light in the window of Kane’s bedroom. Or look at the way that the interviews the reporters in the film conduct with Susan Alexander Kane in her nightclub, the El Rancho, are set up. We watch as the camera pans up to enter through the skylight during a rainstorm. It’s quite dazzling and one of the best representatives of the remarkable camerawork that elevates the film’s overall quality.

The film also uses editing techniques to reveal details about Kane’s life and his interactions with others and then to raise questions about those very details. Susan’s debut as an opera singer is shown twice from different perspectives. During the version that shows what happens from her perspective, Kane is sad. When it is shown from Leland’s perspective, Kane is angry. The use of superimposed images during these sequences also reveals the differing emotional responses of various characters. One of my favorite sequences is the montage of Kane and his first wife having dinner together. As their relationship begins to disintegrate, the table gets longer and longer and the distance between them gets greater and greater. It’s a delightful use of visual images to punctuate the progress of their relationship.

The first half of film, roughly, covers Kane’s rise to prominence as a newspaper magnate and political provocateur. It reveals his lifelong penchant for collecting: newspapers, reporters from competing newspapers, artwork from Europe, and wives. It’s an intriguing depiction of how one’s background can lead to the overaccumulation of objects to fill a void left from the loss of something important in one’s life—in Kane’s case, his mother, who sent him away as a young boy to live with Thatcher and become educated. The second half primarily focuses upon what Kane loses as his hubris grows, and it is quite an extensive list: a gubernatorial race, his first wife, his best friend, the respect and friendship of many of his colleagues, his second wife, and ultimately, any interest in even his own life.  

Kane never seems to get the love that he wants in life. He’s alone by the end of the narrative being recounted by everyone, surrounded only by servants he pays to care for him. Citizen Kane seems to ask what good is the acquisition of wealth and power if you wind up having no one with whom to share? Does the accumulation of treasures and influence fill that emotional void? That’s why the revelation of what the word “Rosebud” (the last word that Kane utters before he dies in the film’s opening sequence) is so touching, and the final image of the film is so resonant. (One question that has never been answered to my satisfaction: How does anyone know what his last word is? He’s alone when he dies if the beginning of the film is to be believed.) Learning what Rosebud refers to does require some remembering on the part of the audience, but it represents the last piece of the puzzle the film is willing to reveal about him.

There is, of course, the controversy over whether Welles and the other filmmakers were trying in Citizen Kane to criticize and/or ridicule newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst. It isn’t necessary to know all (or even any) of the details about the controversy or Hearst’s life to enjoy the film. Knowing that Hearst was personally offended by the film and tried to have it shelved adds an interesting layer to the mythology that has grown up around the film. There’s a great documentary about the controversy, The Battle over Citizen Kane, Oscar-nominated for Best Documentary Feature of 1996, that provides some context to anyone interested.

Oscar Win: Best Original Screenplay

Other Nominations: Best Picture, Best Actor in a Leading Role (Orson Welles), Best Director, Best Black-and-White Cinematography, Best Black-and-White Art Direction-Set Decoration, Best Sound Recording, Best Film Editing, and Best Scoring of a Dramatic Picture 

Hacksaw Ridge (2016)

Hacksaw Ridge tells the real-life story of Desmond Doss, the first conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor. Doss demonstrated remarkable bravery as an Army medic in World War II in rescuing dozens of wounded soldiers even though he himself refused to carry a gun due to his religious beliefs. It’s an interesting choice of topic for a film, given that it could examine our national obsessions with both religion and military strength. Unfortunately, given that the film is directed by Mel Gibson, it instead at times becomes a treatise on the persecution of Christians more than a representation of Doss’ accomplishments. Hacksaw Ridge is certainly an accomplished film in many ways, its editing and sound quality and cinematography, for example, but its simplistic approach to portraying most characters besides Doss as being too weak in their faith actually works against its impact.

Historically, the feats that Doss accomplished were truly astonishing and deserving of tribute and recognition, and the film does a fine job of demonstrating just how astonishing those feats were. Doss rescued dozens of wounded soldiers even after the battlefield was abandoned by the rest of the division, much to the amazement of his commanding officers and fellow soldiers. He keeps dropping them down the side of a cliff with nothing more than a rope and his own stamina. Much of this happens while the risk of enemy fire surrounds him and those he is trying to rescue. This is made all the most amazing given his status as a conscientious objector who refuses to use a gun to kill a fellow human being.

Given how many people in his Virginia hometown had already volunteered, including his own brother, Doss feels like he should be contributing to the war effort even if he’s not going to fire a gun. He wants to become a medic, helping to save lives rather than take them, but he’s assigned to a regular unit filled with men who ridicule him for his adamant refusal to even pick up or otherwise touch a gun. He’s physically and emotionally harassed. His superiors, Sergeant Howell (Vince Vaughn, playing that one note of stupid anger for all it’s worth) and Captain Glover (Sam Worthington, surprisingly more low-key than Vaughn), try to get him discharged for psychological reasons. When that fails, they punish him with extra duties and then punish the others too so that they will turn against Doss. However, even when he is brutally beaten, he refuses to back down from his convictions.

A couple of extended flashbacks are meant to explain the depth of Doss’ resistance to using a gun. However, the two reasons on which the film focuses seem to be rather pat explanations. He almost killed his brother with a brick when they were young boys, and his shock over how easily he could have ended his brother’s life sends him to a drawing of the Ten Commandments in the family’s home. “Thou shalt not kill” becomes his mantra. Later we learn that his father, an alcoholic still suffering from PTSD from seeing all of his friends die in World War I, almost killed his mother when Doss was older, only to have Doss take the gun from his father and almost shoot him. Surely, the film could have done more work examining how Doss’ faith deepened from these and other incidents in his life. Instead they are presented as self-evident. Of course, the film seems to suggest that no reasonable person would want to kill another human being after these two near-misses.

Instead the film seems to want to show the horrors of war. It certainly emphasizes the violence of battle even from its opening sequence. We learn quickly that Doss has been injured and his fellow soldiers are taking him to safety. Rather than tell the story of his life chronologically, the film instead flashes back to Doss’ childhood to provide some explanations for why he opposes killing other human beings. It’s almost halfway through the film before we return to what is revealed as the Battle of Okinawa in May 1945, one of the bloodiest and most protracted battles of World War II. To gain control over the ridge that serves as the title of the film, the 77^th Infantry Division of which Doss is a part must replace the dead and wounded from an earlier division. It’s in this half of the film that the destruction of war is most apparent. We get spared very little visually in terms of the damage that war inflicts. Bodies are mutilated and exploded and shot. The film is particularly graphic in these scenes, an interesting addition to all of the violence that increasingly typifies Gibson’s films.

A subplot involving Doss’ relationship with a nurse who later becomes his wife is charming but hardly revelatory. It primarily serves to reveal that he has always been against killing (and that even his fiancé did not always truly understand what his religious faith meant to him). A court martial against Doss is also a failure other than as an excuse to redeem Doss’ father. The screenplay fails to provide sufficient details about either of those characters or much of the rest of the supporting roles, by the way. Some, like Vaughn’s Sergeant Howell, rarely rise above caricature.

The Christ imagery here becomes rather self-indulgent and heavy-handed at times, undercutting some of the other strengths of the film. This is not meant to diminish in any way what Doss achieved or to belittle his faith; it’s just that the moments outside of the battle sequences seem primarily designed to support an assertion about Doss’ righteousness and right-ness. During his “purification” ritual,” for example, as he washes the blood of battle and rescue off himself, the light that shimmers through the red-tinged water glows almost like a halo. And when he is being taken down the cliff, the lighting wouldn’t have been out of place in King of Kings or any other Biblical epic from the 1950s or 1960s. Even when he’s jailed to await trial, he’s bathed in golden light. All of this would be a lot easier to take if it were possible to overlook that many of the other characters in the movie (also based on real people) probably had very strong religious convictions too and had somehow addressed those beliefs with the need to use force during wartime. However, their faith gets downplayed or even overlooked (even ridiculed a bit) in order to strengthen Doss’ depth of faith and ensure that he is portrayed as a “savior” not just in terms of the men who owe their lives to his rescues.

In many ways, it’s easy to see why Gibson would choose this story. Here’s the tale of a Christian being unfairly persecuted because no one truly understands the depth of his faith. Everyone seems to be against Doss, and they all have to be proven wrong. Actually, the film demands more than that. Almost everyone who doubted Doss or criticized him during the film has to realize that he’s actually a better man than they originally realized. The plot demands that they face him and tell him that they misjudged him. Imagine how satisfying that must have been for someone like Gibson, who has honed his persecution complex for decades both in public and in the angry, violent films he has produced, directed, and starred in.

Oscar Wins: Best Achievement in Film Editing, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Andrew Garfield), Best Achievement in Directing (Mel Gibson), Best Achievement in Sound Editing 

Best Live Action Short Film of 2009

The Door is an Irish film about an incident that occurred in the former Soviet Union. I suppose by now most people have heard that the subject of the film is the aftermath of the accident at Chernobyl, but at the start of the film, we only know that an entire town is being evacuated. We are not explicitly told why. I first suspected that I was watching a Holocaust film, but the more contemporary clothing dissuaded me from that conclusion. We follow one family, primarily through a series of flashbacks, as they deal with the declining health of the daughter. When we see the end credits' reference to Chernobyl, the film makes sense in retrospect, but that doesn't make it any less bleak. It is a well-made film, certainly, but this is pretty dark material to watch.

Sweden's Instead of Abracadabra is the funniest of the nominated films. It's about a rather inept self-identified magician who still lives at home with his parents. He's really terrible at his craft, having seriously injured his mother in the famous trick of inserting a sword into a box containing a person. The magician's father wants him to take a more serious job, but the younger man knows that he can show everyone his talent and win the heart of a lovely nurse who's just moved in next door to his family's farm. There are many laughs to be had watching this film; it's the only one of the five that is primarily designed as a comic piece. After the screening I watched, almost everyone was repeating the magician's catch phrase of "Chimay!" (or something to that effect), suggesting that it was the one that stuck with people the longest.

Kavi is a co-production of India and the United States and deals with serious subject matter in a very restrained, adult way. The title character is an Indian boy whose family is forced to work at a brick factory in what amounts to slave labor. They are attempting to pay off a debt by making bricks, but we quickly get the sense that their debt will never be allowed to be paid in full. Despite efforts by government officials and activists to rescue the workers and despite attempts on Kavi's part to flee, the bosses always seem to succeed. This is not necessarily an easy film to watch, given how unflinchingly it depicts the forced labor that some in India must endure, but it is clear in its message and offers a sense of hope that young people like Kavi might be saved from a life of endless, brutal work. The writer-director, Gregg Helvey, graduated from one of my alma maters, the University of Southern California, but I was already impressed by this film (his master's thesis) before the end credits revealed that piece of information.

Miracle Fish is an Australian film about a little boy who, on his birthday, seeks refuge in the nurse's office at his school. He's been teased by some of the other boys at school for his lack of presents (save for the title fish, an odd piece of plastic that curves to tell your fortune or something—I never quite got a handle on this), and he just wants to get away from everyone for a while. When he wakes up from his nap, the school is empty. At first, the boy is very happy because it means he won't be teased any longer about being poor, but there are signs that something odd and dangerous has occurred. Much of the second half of the film is incredibly dark and rather frightening. Even though the subject of the film is a young boy, this is definitely not a movie for children.

The New Tenants is mostly just an actor's showcase, and as such, I found it to be a little dull. The title characters are a gay couple who have just moved into an apartment that was the site of a gruesome murder. We watch as one strange neighbor after another appears at their door, each one adding a little piece of information to the puzzle of what happened in the apartment. A couple of recognizable actors appear in this short, notably Vincent D'Onofrio and Kevin Corrigan, but the others (all character actors, unsurprisingly) are vaguely recognizable as well. The plausibility of the sequence of events was a bit much for me, and the ending is just a bit too bizarre. To be honest, I also didn't particularly enjoy the rather stereotypical depiction of gay characters either. At this point in our history, do we still need to be trafficking in stereotypes for the sake of overacting?

Oscar Winner: The New Tenants. I suspect that the quirkiness of the film coupled with the performances of actors many of the voters probably know personally was just too tempting to overlook. It is certainly an accomplished film, but I still feel unsatisfied with the ending, which seems to take the movie and its characters firmly out of the realm of the "real" where the film has (perhaps absurdly) kept them throughout the narrative.

My Choice: Kavi is the most accomplished of the five films. I admired it on almost every level: acting, directing, cinematography, you name it. It's also one of the most emotional films, and I think it earns the sympathy for its characters honestly. 

Best Animated Short Film of 2015

Bear Story is a wordless, computer-generated animated film about a bear who fixes a mechanical toy that he takes to the town square in order to earn money. When someone gives him money, he cranks up the toy and we learn about his own life. He was apparently kidnapped and forced to perform in the circus, leaving behind his wife and child. This film is essentially wordless, but the tale depicted by the mechanical toy is very clear in its sequence of events. To make such a toy in real life would be nearly impossible, I think, but the depth of the action and the range of characters it includes are just spectacular. This film has a melancholy tone for much of its running time, but that doesn’t detract from the emotional impact that this sentimental and moving film has.

During the screening of the Animated Short Film nominees that I attended, a disclaimer appeared about Prologue, warning that due to violence and nudity it would inappropriate for children and they should be taken out of the theater before it began. That message left me puzzled over what to expect, a feeling that didn’t necessarily leave after watching the film. The violence is indeed graphic, and there’s a lot of it since the story primarily involves a battle between two sets of warriors. The film is drawn in black and white, almost like pencil drawings, similar in some ways to the ones in a-ha’s famous “Take on Me” video. The artwork is well executed overall, the men’s bodies are nicely detailed (and two of them are nude and rather realistic), and the use of bright red to depict profuse amounts of blood is effective. However, the point of the story was lost on me. It feels almost like this was a sketch made to be a part of a longer narrative. We’re never told in this wordless film why these men are fighting or what different sides they represent. It’s too much of an enigma to enjoy, so you wind up just admiring the talents of the artists but little more.

Sanjay’s Super Team is a charming little tale of a young boy (the Sanjay of the title) trying to watch his favorite cartoon superheroes. However, his father wants to worship, and they struggle over who gets his way. The tension between popular culture and religion is somewhat downplayed here in favor of a story about the boy’s imaginative melding of the deities of his family’s religious faith with the adventure of the cartoon shows that he prefers. This is another wordless film that works best when the three figures from his father’s small altar become, in Sanjay’s fantasies, superheroes taking on evil in the world. It’s good to see Pixar, one of the giants in animation for decades now, taking on different cultures in their short films. Sanjay’s Super Team displays the typical look of a Pixar film with its bright, glossy colors, and it only takes about seven minutes to ground us in a captivating narrative.

We Can’t Live without Cosmos features two Russian cosmonauts who are competing to be shot into space. As the film progresses, we learn that they have wanted to be astronauts for most of their lives, and they have been together as friends—or perhaps more?—for many years. This is yet another wordless short, but the story is very clear and easy to follow. (By the way, what is going on with the short films without dialogue? This is getting to be quite the trend among nominees.) We get to see what kinds of tests they endure and how easily they can perform the tasks. They have such a sense of joy and giddiness that you come to root for them to succeed. It appears to me that the two men who are the central characters are in love with each other, and there are several homoerotic elements to the film, not the least of which is when the men share a bed together while fantasizing about traveling through space. There’s also an undercurrent of melancholy to this film as well, given its focus on the dangers of space travel, but I found it to be very charming overall. It’s not a spoiler to tell you that the title of the movie is also the title of a book that the two men have shared throughout their lives, and while I was watching the short, which clocks in at a brisk sixteen minutes, I kept wondering whether the filmmakers were hoping that the different meanings of cosmos (space, yes, but also the cocktail) would be on anyone’s mind.

World of Tomorrow is the one film among the 2015 nominees that involves characters talking, and they are very chatty, particularly one of them. It’s tough to explain quickly what the plot addresses, but here goes: A clone from a dystopian future contacts the girl from whom she has descended, Emily Prime. The “prime” designation, of course, refers to the fact that Emily was the first in a line of Emilys. The clone then transports the first Emily to the future so that she can learn about the horrific events that will occur in the future and about the dangers of such things as time travel. It’s all delivered in a rather flat, emotionless tone that doesn’t particularly suit the subject matter, and honestly, this short’s characters are rather crudely drawn—little more than stick figures, really—and they interact with (act in front of?) a lot of computer-generated backgrounds that float behind them. I suppose the message of the film, something about how much we desire to hold on to memories because they provide us comfort during difficult times, is admirable, but it’s tough to appreciate or enjoy much other than the comic statements by Emily Prime, who doesn’t fully understand what her clone descendant tries to tell her but who does comprehend sadness and loss in others.

Winner: Bear Story, a solid choice given the accomplished style of the film.

My Choice: We Can’t Live without Cosmos, a charming and offbeat tale with a richness of mostly unexpressed emotion.

Best Live Action Short Film of 2015

Ave Maria is the most humorous of this year’s nominees for Best Live Action Short. It’s about the clash of cultures and religious faiths in the settlements on the West Bank. Three Jews—a husband, his wife, and his mother—crash their car into the statue of the Virgin Mary in front of the home of the Sisters of Mercy. The five nuns there have taken a vow of silence, so they are not able to help very much when their unexpected visitors need help. For example, the Jews need someone to operate the phone for them because their accident has occurred after Shabbat. They also keep kosher, not something that the nuns have done, making even getting a drink of water fraught with tension. This is a charming film overall and a quite funny one, even though it traffics in stereotypes, and broadly so at times. I suppose there’s a message here about how we can manage to live together even though we come from very different backgrounds, but it’s probably lost on the audience members, who are more likely just to chuckle at the plot.

Day One covers the first day on the job for a woman serving as an American military translator in Afghanistan. It’s a harrowing short film because she seems completely unready for the horrors of war; almost everything upsets her and prompts her to claim that she can’t accomplish any of the tasks she is assigned to do. Like Ave Maria, Day One deals with the clash of cultures although the focus here is on the occupiers (the United States military) and the occupied. When a pregnant woman has complications while giving birth, the complications of gender arise. The one doctor who is available is male and cannot be in the room with the mother; his attempts to explain the necessary procedure to the translator fail, of course. This is a well-made film overall, but the tone is rather somber and the film is uncomfortable to watch on occasion.

Everything Will Be Okay, a German film, is the longest and perhaps the most accomplished nominee. It is not, however, an easy to film to watch. It begins simply with a father picking up his daughter up from her mother’s house. We slowly learn that the parents are divorced and that the father, who has apparently lost joint custody of his daughter, is planning to run away with the child to Manila. We watch as he takes her to a series of places to get ready to escape, obtaining an emergency passport for his daughter and getting rid of his car so he will leave nothing behind. The tension increases as the movie progresses, and it’s particularly frightening to watch the little girl slowly gain awareness of what her father is doing. He’s tried to distract her by getting her gifts and taking her to a fair, and she seems to be having a great time when they are just having fun. However, the second half is particularly grueling to watch, and the most difficult sequence occurs when the mother and the police show up at the hotel room where he’s hiding due to a flight delay. His desperation at trying to keep his daughter from being taken away from him is heartbreaking. We don’t really get the mother’s side of the story, but there is enough here to evoke both anger at and empathy for the father. While this short could easily be expanded to become a feature length film, it already stands as a complete and emotionally complex story.

Shok follows the friendship of two Albanian boys living in Kosovo during the Serbian takeover of the 1990s. One of the boys, Petrit, convinces his friend Oki to take a bicycle to the camp where the Serbian soldiers are headquartered. Petrit finds stuff to sell to the soldiers, but one of them demands Oki’s new bike, claiming that Serbian children should get bicycles before Albanians are allowed to have them. It’s pretty easy to get angry watching a grown man take a bike from a child, but the suffering doesn’t end there. The boys and other Albanians are harassed on the bus and have to leave in a constant state of fear. The two central characters get upset with each other and refuse to talk to each other from time to time, but they manage to forgive each other and keep their friendship alive in the face of what is happening to their people. In fact, the most harrowing sequence involves Petrit’s family being forced out of their homes and only being allowed to take a few possessions with them. A frame around the narrative involves Petrit, now grown, discovering a bike on the road and taking it back to where his family once lived. The frame device is really unnecessary, to be honest, because the film is powerful and sad enough without it.

Stutterer is a charming romantic tale that features as its title character a young typographer who has fallen in love with a woman that he’s met online. By the way, who works as a typographer any longer? The young man decides that she wants to meet in person to see if the relationship can progress in real time, but he’s just too uncomfortable trying to talk to people and is too anxious to take her up on her offer initially. He can speak to his father the easiest, but every phone call that he makes is a disaster, and you can sense just how frustrating it is for him to speak to anyone else. The filmmakers present several of these phone calls to demonstrate how difficult his life is. He doesn’t stutter in his thoughts, though, so the narration of what he’s thinking, particularly the snarky characterizations he makes of other people, is clear. The main character may not be the most handsome fellow, but he is such a nice guy, and you root for him to be successful in his love life. There are, of course, uncomfortable moments because you sense that he might not be able to overcome his fears, but in true romantic comedy fashion, the ending is a delightful and satisfying finish to the plot. This is the shortest film among the nominees, but it manages to convey a full and interesting story in only about eleven minutes.

Winner: Stutterer, a worthy choice given how the film manages to bridge a range of emotions honestly.

My Choice: Everything Will Be Okay, the most technically polished and emotionally wrenching of a pretty downbeat bunch of shorts.

Best Animated Short Film of 2014

The Bigger Picture, a short from the United Kingdom, is a very downbeat film. It concerns two middle-aged brothers and their ailing mother who needs to be committed to a nursing home. One of the brothers, Richard, does all of the work caring for her, but he remains perpetually underappreciated. The other, Nick, is a bit of a snob, to be honest, and quite unappealing, but he always takes credit for anything good that he does, no matter how small. The film gives a clear sense of the different personalities of the two brothers, one of whom is unemployed and a bit of a loser and the other being the one for whom everything seems to come easily. The short features a couple of moments of levity here and there, but I suppose a filmmaker would find it tough to make this material funny. At times, the short’s images look almost like paintings, crudely drawn perhaps, but they must have been large to match the actual sized furnishings on display. The attempt at reconciliation seems forced here despite knowing that this scenario is too common among siblings.

The Dam Keeper tackles the subject of how important friendship can be to someone being bullied. A little pig lives alone in a windmill that keeps darkness (pollution? bad weather?) away from his town. He took over the job from his father after the elder pig’s passing, and even though he is still in school, he has to reset the windmill twice daily to preserve the town. Sadly, all of the other animals in the school harass and tease the little pig; the reason is never clear although I guess the implication is that he’s a loner who prefers to keep to himself, and young people never seem to understand that impulse. The arrival of a new student, a little fox, changes the pig’s life when the two realize that they both like to draw. Although they would seem to be “natural” enemies—after all, a pig and a fox being friends?—but perhaps the message is that even opposites can have things in common. A misunderstanding separates them, and the pig doesn’t make it home in time to prevent the town from being immersed in darkness one day.  All is resolved happily eventually, and the fox and the pig enjoy their time alone in the large windmill. I don’t know how young a child could be and still understand the message of this film, but given how many young people we’ve lost in recent years to suicide because of bullying, I’m certain it would resonate with many, many people. You could easily “read” the friendship between the pig and the fox as the beginning of a budding romance, given that both of them are male, but most people would probably prefer to concentrate just upon their friendship.

Feast, a very polished entry from the United States, is a delight. A Disney short that aired before Big Hero 6 in theaters, it features the story of a puppy whose love of food propels the narrative. Unfortunately, what happens in its owner’s life determines what kind of food the little French bulldog gets. When it’s tiny and first rescued, the dog gets delicious scraps from the table, pretty much whatever the owner wants to eat since he’s a bachelor at the time, but when the owner gets a girlfriend (a waitress) the food switches to healthy food served with garnish. When the couple breaks up, the food doesn’t revert back to the meatballs and pizza the dog once enjoyed. The owner’s depression over the split prompts the dog, now grown bigger and seemingly wiser, to reunite the couple despite its fears that it will have to keep eating healthily. Later, though, the arrival of a baby in the house means the dog now gets to eat everything again, so he gets a happy ending after all. I would warn you not to watch this short if you’re hungry because the food, especially in the early scenes, looks delicious. What we’re watching here, of course, isn’t the story of the dog. It merely foregrounds the story of the couple’s relationship, but the choice to keep the dog as the central focus is a wise one. Anyone who loves dogs will enjoy watching the facial expressions on this one’s face.

Me and My Moulton tells the story of three sisters in Norway whose family life seems to them to be too different (i.e., strange) from their friends’ lives. Narrated by the 7-year-old middle daughter, this co-production of Norway and Canada brings into contrast the lives these girls lead as the children of architects when compared to their apparently wealthier neighbors. For example, everyone else in the area seems to have a bicycle, prompting repeated appeals to the girls’ parents to purchase them one as well. Unfortunately, the parents can’t afford an expensive bike and they can’t purchase one immediately, leading the narrator to bemoan why her parents aren’t more like everyone else’s. We learn, though, that the downstairs neighbors who seem to be so happy truly aren’t. Meanwhile, the girls and their parents live more simply and seem to enjoy each other’s company more. The arrival of the bicycle, the Moulton of the title, adds to the girl’s eventual realization that you should accept your situation in life. It might not be quite as bad as you imagine it to be. The animation for this short is rather simple, but the use of bright colors helps to heighten its impact. A few clever moments also add to the humor, especially the three-legged chairs that keep tipping over and depositing their sitters on the floor. The narrative doesn’t reveal anything particularly profound, but Me and My Moulton is enjoyable to watch.

A Single Life clocks in at little more than two minutes long and, to be honest, ended just about the time I figured out what was happening. A woman receives a 45 rpm single in the mail and puts it on her record player. When the record skips, if it moves forward in the song, she ages. If it skips backward, she becomes younger. That’s really it. Maybe there’s a message here about living in the moment rather than trying to move too quickly to your future or always trying to relive your past. However, given its quick running time, this short from the Netherlands doesn’t really have or take the time to have much of an impact. It’s cute and clever, but not much else. This is the slightest film in the category, and you have to wonder how the voters selected it over all of the other animated short films released in 2014.

Oscar Winner: Feast. This short is yet another example of the revived Disney tradition of quality short films to accompany its feature films.

My Choice: Feast. It’s beautifully drawn, which you cannot say about most of the other entries, and the story is beautifully resonant as well. 

American Sniper (2014)

I had a very complicated, almost divided reaction to American Sniper, which is based on the life of Chris Kyle, the most successful sniper in the history of the American military. The movie itself seems divided as well. Kyle (played by Bradley Cooper) managed to kill hundreds of Iraqis while trying to protect Marines and others who were a part of the war effort, yet he found himself increasingly unable to return to civilian life after each of his tours of duty. While the film doesn’t ostensibly seem to take any sides in the debate over the war itself, its depiction of Kyle’s single-minded dedication to his job as a killer struck me as troubling. We are asked both to accept the depth of his concern for the lives of those he protects in battle and to recognize that his career—particularly his remarkable skill and success at killing—is destroying his ability to have a “normal” existence with his family. I realize that the filmmakers were hewing very closely to the best-selling autobiography Kyle wrote, but the film makes little effort to make connections between what happens during war and what the consequences of those events are.

The center of the film is the performance by Cooper, who plays Kyle as a man who never questions what he is supposed to do in life. When he is younger, still a child, he obeys whatever his father tells him. His father is the one who teaches him how to shoot and how to not only defend himself but those who need defending. As a result, Kyle develops a rather strict moral code that he tends to follow for the rest of his life. For example, when he returns early from a rodeo weekend to discover a girlfriend cheating on him with another man, he throws out both the guy and then the girlfriend. He asks no questions and he refuses to accept her explanations; she has done something wrong, so she is no longer a part of his life—it’s that simple. He realizes that he has to look after his younger brother, and so he does. He knows that he’s supposed to go to church and read the Bible, so he does. He knows he needs to serve his country when he sees the attacks on our embassies, so he does. Later, when he and his wife watch the attacks on the World Trade Center on 9/11, he doesn’t have to wonder what he should do. He knows that he will be going after the people who have attacked America and he will be trying to protect his wife and family.

Of course, such a story sounds incredibly simplistic. Were there never any thoughts, for example, that perhaps his father was too stern with his younger brother? (The father does seem to be ready to whip the little boy after he’s been bullied at school. All that saves him is their mother and the fact that Kyle has beaten up the bully to protect his sibling.)  Does he ever contemplate whether or not the United States is going after the right people by invading Iraq or does he just accept that what his commander-in-chief tells him is the truth? Where does the film grapple with these issues? They might have provided some context for understanding Kyle as a more realistic human being, but they are absent from American Sniper.

After the opening sequence (more on that later), the film follows a somewhat predictable chronological order. We see Kyle’s childhood, his enlistment and training, his courtship of his wife Taya (played by Sienna Miller), and then a series of tours of duty and returns to the States. Most of the choices for the overall plot are reasonable. However, the montage of how he and the other Navy SEALs are trained seemed rather, well, silly. I hope that the Navy actually toughens them up by means other than forcing them to sit in cold mud and lying in the ocean waves with their arms interlocked with fellow candidates. Yes, I realize that I don’t want someone to spray me with a hose while I’m trying to do leg lifts, but surely a SEAL goes through much more arduous training that what is shown here. Perhaps the Navy wouldn’t allow a depiction of the actual methods used for making enlistees into SEALs. You have to expect it’s a great deal more than this, though.

I tried for a while to keep count of the number of people that Kyle kills, but the numbers got too overwhelming too quickly. The ones that are shown, especially in a sequence involving a massive dust storm, are very tense moments. The film does an admirable job of depicting the dangers of war and the kinds of loss that the men and women who serve must make. It also opens our eyes to the kind of dedication that being in a war zone takes. A significant portion of the film focuses on the search for an Iraqi called “The Butcher” and Kyle’s plan to kill both The Butcher and his accomplice, a Syrian sharpshooter only known as Mustafa. Since the film uses these historical figures as part of the plot, you get to see just how close the Americans came at times to stopping some of the worst of the war criminals and how they felt when they lost out on an opportunity. To watch American Sniper is, to a large extent, to experience the sense of both the dedication and frustration that people like Kyle experienced.

The scenes of war are interspersed with scenes of Kyle’s life when he returns from a tour of duty. These moments are some of the most painful to watch, including a scene where his wife’s doctor tries to get him to seek some medical help or when a fellow soldier tries to get him to come to the local VA to talk with some other returned veterans. Kyle refuses all help because he thinks that he is fine even though almost anyone around him can tell that he is too tense and wary to be truly okay. What is difficult to determine is whether or not Kyle ever realized that his mental state back in the U.S. was being so severely affected by what he witnessed in war. He’s unable for long periods of time to share with his wife what he has seen and done, a sore spot in their relationship. He won’t acknowledge the losses of his comrades, and he even refuses to accept the thanks that he receives for all of the good that he has done on behalf of the other soldiers. When he makes a remarkable transformation after meeting with some wounded veterans, we aren’t given any information to let us know what has changed for him, just that he’s changed. It’s moments like this that I found most infuriating about this film. What prompted Kyle to leave the Navy and start working with his fellow veterans would have provided us some insight into what makes this man who he is, but the film leaves it to our imagination to wonder what has happened to make him such a different man.

The Iraq war has become a subject of a spate of recent movies, and it’s both tempting and difficult to compare them. If this film differs from The Hurt Locker, a film that won the Oscar for Best Picture just six years ago, it’s the greater emphasis on how difficult a time the soldiers have in adjusting back to civilian life. While The Hurt Locker placed more emphasis on how an adrenaline junkie like its main character finds life back at home boring, American Sniper really focuses on the sense of purpose someone like Kyle misses when not in country. Cooper, so very different in this film from much of his previous work, does manage to convey just how lost Kyle seems to feel when he’s not involved in helping his country and his countrymen in trying to stop what he sees as evil in the world.

Technically, the film is solid work overall. Director Clint Eastwood doesn’t tend to go for flashy cinematography and editing in his films. Even the special effects do not “stand out” as distinctive; they’re just what you would expect in a war movie, nothing more and nothing less. American Sniper is rather good old-fashioned classical Hollywood-style movie-making. There are a few exceptions here and there such as the opening sequence involving Kyle’s first kills: a boy and a woman who are trying to blow up some Marines on the ground. The camera allows us here—and at a couple of other times—to see what Kyle sees through his rifle’s scope, the limited amount of vision that he has to rely upon to make a decision that could be the difference between life and death and between glory and dishonor. After that sequence, though, the film reverts to a more standard biopic structure only to return briefly to this moment in Kyle’s life when it fits more properly into the story of his life.

In a way, it was a very savvy choice on the part of the filmmakers to withhold information that would or could have forced the audience to have only one narrow option for interpreting the film’s politics; it might have been easier to choose a side and present it relentlessly throughout the film. However, liberals and progressives can watch American Sniper and concentrate primarily upon the damage that war inflicts on its soldiers. They can pay close attention to Kyle’s difficulties in transitioning to civilian life and how some involvement with others who have had similar experiences is necessary in order for his healing to begin. They can use the film’s plot as evidence for additional funding for therapy and/or other approaches to helping returning veterans and even as an argument against war given the drastic impact that it has on its participants. By contrast, conservatives can emphasize Kyle’s level of devotion to his country, the kind of unquestioning patriotism that he exhibits. They can point to the level of sacrifice that it takes to serve one’s country, a willingness to give up all of the privileges of being an American in order to maintain the way of life that we have come to expect. They can describe the film’s plot as a testament to the need for more support, financial and otherwise, for the military and those who are serving on behalf of the United States and even as evidence for additional involvement in war efforts in order to continue preserving the culture that produces people like Kyle. Because of the somewhat enigmatic approach taken by the creators of the film, both sides can make their case, and in a sense, both will be correct. Some viewers, of course, will consider this ambiguity a failing of the film, but I would consider it the component that raises American Sniper from being a merely good or competently made film into one that raises rather than settles important questions about our involvement in war and the impact on the people who are most directly affected by it.

Oscar Win: Best Achievement in Sound Editing

Other Nominations: Best Motion Picture, Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role (Bradley Cooper), Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Achievement in Sound Mixing, Best Achievement in Film Editing

Room (2015)

Room, adapted by writer Emma Donoghue from her own novel, has two distinct, equally emotional segments to its narrative. They stand in stark contrast to each other, with the first half very confined to a single small space and the latter half being set in the wider but sometimes just as frightening world. The filmmakers manage to keep the suspense taut throughout the film, though, even though the initial half could have easily been devolved into a kind of horror-film excess and the second part could have fallen into overly sentimental melodrama of the worst sort. Watching Room is not an upbeat experience, honestly, but what emerges is a powerful depiction of the kind of strength it takes to survive a hellish experience.

The first half of the film reveals itself in very measured steps as the audience comes to realize that a woman and her son are imprisoned in a 10-by-10 foot garden shed by a man they refer to as Old Nick. Old Nick kidnapped Joy (played by Brie Larson) seven years earlier and fathered Jack (played with great depth by newcomer Jason Tremblay) two years later. In order to protect Jack from the truth, Joy convinces her young son that the space that they call Room is actually the entire world, that there is no existence outside of the shed. She becomes increasingly desperate to escape from the forced malnutrition, power shut-offs, and repeated rapes (and other forms of violence), so she begins to reveal aspects of the truth of their situation to an initially skeptical Jack. The escape that they plot and execute provides a harrowing centerpiece to the film.

The second half is no less tense than the first. While the threat of constant physical danger may have been removed, both Joy and Jack have significant and challenging adjustments that they must make to their new existence. Joy, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, finds it difficult to reintegrate into life with her mother (the great Joan Allen) and her mother’s new live-in boyfriend, Leo. She finds it difficult to express clearly how she’s feeling since she knows that no one could perhaps comprehend what she has endured for seven years. Jack has his own issues, given that he’s grown up in such an isolated environment. The world is such a mystery to him, one that he is initially reluctant to encounter directly. He has to build a sense of trust with other people besides his mother, but the transition is frightening.

There’s a powerful lesson here about what our imagination can do. Given only one skylight through which to experience the world, Joy and Jack initially have to make their own world. Joy’s initial creativity in explaining what they see on television, for example, demonstrates what a keen mind she has. To give her son more of a sense of the vastness and greatness of the world outside Room would lead to potentially destructive consequences. When she does begin to share more realistic details about the world, Jack’s ability to comprehend such matters goes a long way toward explaining how he has managed to survive locked away in the wardrobe at night when his mother is being raped a few feet away.

This film also makes a strong point about how much we come to depend upon each other. Jack, of course, needs his mother in order to survive. She fights for him by asking Old Nick to supply vitamins for the boy’s health and even to acknowledge the boy’s birthday. She decides it’s time to escape when she realizes that she and Jack can no longer live in the confining environment of Room. However, interestingly, Joy needs Jack almost as much. Without him, she might have given up years earlier. It’s his importance to her life that keeps her motivated to escape and get back to a “normal” existence. This doesn’t mean that the two of them are always happy with each other; it’s easy to get on each other’s nerves when you’re in contact with each other 24 hours a day. Even after the escape, the bond between them is at times intense and needy and supportive and exhausting. When it is no longer just the two of them, they still cling to each other and get frustrated with each other.

The performance by Tremblay as Jack is integral to the success of the film. He’s astonishingly good without demonstrating a sort of “Hollywood precociousness.” He reacts the way that a five-year-old boy might react, and the way that he plays with his toys or bounces around a room would be familiar to anyone with a little boy in the family. Had Tremblay given a less nuanced performance, Room would have nowhere near the emotional impact that it ultimately has. We have to experience a great deal of the narrative through Jack’s perspective, and Tremblay shows us with amazing clarity what it is like to experience the world for the first time, how confusing and exciting that can be. He would have been a formidable candidate for Best Actor in a Leading Role had he been nominated, but Hollywood (and the Oscars, as a subset of it) has a long, sad history of ignoring child actors with this kind of depth.

All of the performances in the film are first rate. Larson has been justifiably recognized by many awards groups for her performance, including the Oscars, and she and Tremblay receive able support from Allen as Joy’s mother, who reveals a full history of her own brand of suffering and pain in the way she reacts to her daughter’s return. It’s good to see Allen even in such a small role; she always is such a welcome presence to a film. William H. Macy gets only a couple of quick moments as Joy’s father, but he provides an interesting counterpoint to the happy-you’re-free response from the other characters. He is the astringent that wipes away the possibility that everyone will be supportive of Joy and, particularly, Jack, making the overall film more realistic in its tone. Even Sean Bridgers as Old Nick brings an essential villainous presence to the first half without resorting to stereotype; there’s a true sense of relief when he disappears halfway through the film.

The challenge of filming in such a small space as Room could have been (and probably was) quite daunting. The production design team has created a remarkable environment within the garden shed, with the kinds of touches that demonstrates a keen attention to the kinds of details that would evolve over a seven-year span of time in such a confining space. The child’s drawings on the wall, the egg shell snake created as a craft project to distract Jake, the small area that serves as a kitchen—all of them and many other touches blend together to give a sense of a room truly being lived in. Similar kudos go to the costume design team, particularly for the clothes that Jack wears while he and his mother are still in Room. You can imagine what limits there would have been to these two captives and how they would have been more creative in what to wear each day.

The Hollywood version of this film would undoubtedly have had a more upbeat ending; there is a reason, after all, that they’re called “Hollywood endings.” However, as an independent film with a strong undercurrent of international funding support (Canada, Great Britain, Ireland, etc.), Room provides a muted ending more appropriate to the situation being depicted. It’s not that there isn’t a sense of happiness or even optimism earned by the ending; it’s just that everything couldn’t be tidy and completely resolved to everyone’s satisfaction and still stay true to the spirit of the rest of the story.

Oscar Win: Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role (Brie Larson),

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Motion Picture of the Year, Best Achievement in Directing (Lenny Abrahamson), Best Adapted Screenplay