If you’re planning to watch this year’s batch of Oscar-nominated live-action short films, make sure you’ve got a box of tissues nearby. (In one case, you might also want a phone to call your nearest local representative.) This category can serve as a proving ground for budding filmmakers, but it can also become a bit of a frenzy to try and pack as much Meaning™ as possible into 40 minutes or less. This year’s entries to straight for the heart and the jugular; Wes Anderson’s 40-minute Technicolor adaptation of “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar” feels almost out of place in a program that otherwise feels intent on sending us all straight to our therapists’ offices.
Some of these shorts—like the Samantha Bee-produced abortion tale “Red, White, and Blue” and Canadian director Vincent René-Lortie’s “Invincible”—examine the deeply personal effects of structural injustice. Meanwhile, the David Oyewolo vehicle “The After” and the Danish downer “Knight of Fortune” steep us in the specific grief of men who’ve lost their wives, although only one of them does so effectively. And then, there’s Anderson’s take on Roald Dahl, which will likely please his devotees but might underwhelm everyone else.
“The After”
Netflix’s 18-minute short marks the directorial debut of Misan Harriman—a social activist, entrepreneur, and photographer who became one of the primary visual documentarians of the Black Lives Matter movement. Harriman has said that this short is borne out of the “collective trauma of 2020,” but from the film itself, it’s unfortunately unclear what that might mean.
The short introduces us to David Oyelowo’s character, Dayo, a distracted businessman who decides to skip his big meeting to watch his daughter’s dance recital. Then, a man murders his daughter before his eyes and his wife commits suicide by jumping off the roof where all of this unfolded. A year later, we cut to Dayo working for a ride share service when a family’s backseat conversation levels him with sorrow.
It’s clear that Harriman wants to explore the non-linear, unpredictable and overwhelming nature of grief, but the set-up and resolution in “The After” both feel abrupt and contrived. The murder feels completely unbelievable, and while Oyelowo’s acting makes Dayo’s sadness viscerally tangible, his sudden acceptance in the end feels more forced than illuminating. Overall, the execution here does not feel thoughtful or unique enough for a story that ultimately relies on one of the most over-used tropes in the book: women and girls dying to motivate a male protagonist.
“Red, White, and Blue”
In this gut-wrenching 23-minute film, produced by Samantha Bee, Brittany Snow plays a waitress named Rachel who is desperately seeking an abortion. A mother of two living in Arkansas, where all abortions are illegal with severely limited exceptions, Rachel scours her meager savings (and her daughter’s piggy bank) to drive with her daughter, Maddy (played by Juliet Donenfeld), to Mississippi, where she hopes to schedule the procedure.
The drive unfolds like a feel-good girls’ trip until director Nazrin Choudhury drops a horrific twist on us at the hospital. Rachel isn’t bringing her daughter along to save money on childcare; the 10-year-old has survived a rape and is now pregnant. This revelation recontextualizes all that came before it. Judgmental viewers who might have blamed Rachel for her situation or questioned her choice must now stare into the blank eyes of her child as she lies in a hospital bed awaiting her procedure.
Some viewers might balk at Maddy’s age and her violent rape by a stranger. (Statistically, the vast majority of child sexual-abuse survivors know their assailants.) Still, it’s worth noting that her circumstances—including her age—come straight out of recent headlines from red states that have banned abortion after the fall of Roe v. Wade. Unfortunately, “Red, White, and Blue” reflects a horrific reality that threatens to grow even more common, depending on the future of abortion access in the United States. In other words, it’s a tear-jerking rallying cry.
“Knight of Fortune”
Humor is a rare find among this year’s nominees, but “Knight of Fortune” offers a brief respite from the dour offerings that surround it. The 25-minute Danish film follows a man named Karl (Leif Andrée) as he paces around a morgue to avoid saying goodbye to his late wife. First, he tries (and miserably fails) to fix the overhead light in the room where her casket lies. Then, he heads to the bathroom where he sits in a stall and meets Torben (Jens Jørn Spottag)—a curious fellow who asks him for help saying goodbye to his own wife.
In case the film’s pop song-inspired title doesn’t give it away, Karl’s journey through the morgue is not entirely sad. By the end, when he realizes Torben’s true reason for being in the hospital and seeks his company anyway, the story actually feels life-affirming in a strange, bittersweet, lightly humorous way. How fitting that the one short film on this list that actually manages the fridging trope effectively takes place in a morgue.
“Invincible”
Montreal-based director Vincent René-Lortie has been making short films and music videos since 2014. A decade later, as he works on his first feature film, his moving short “Invincible” should put him on the map. Inspired by the tragic story of the director’s childhood friend Marc-Antoine Bernier, the film follows a caged 14-year-old boy named Marc, who wants nothing more than to be free from the juvenile detention facility where he lives. We observe the final 48 hours of his life, as he swims with his younger sister before he’s forced to return to the center.
As we observe Marc locked up in a claustrophobic room with permanently-closed windows and no working fan, we can feel the dissonance inside him. Actor Léokim Beaumier-Lépine’s face is a kaleidoscope of pent-up emotions, some of which seem strange even to himself. There’s teenage rage, righteous indignation, and, in some rare moments, a little bit of hope. As we know from the beginning, however, all of that humanity and poetry is about to disappear—an incomprehensible tragedy that René-Lortie translates with devastating empathy.
“The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar”
Anderson’s take on Roald Dahl’s novel is the stronger of Netflix’s two entries this year. As always, the Fantastic Mr. Fox director’s visual stylings are whimsically lavish, and Anderson’s puckish fingerprints are all over the playful storytelling, even if the narrative voice remains distinctly Dahl-ian. Benedict Cumberbatch plays Henry Sugar himself, while Ralph Fiennes plays the novel’s author in the frame story. Supporting cast members Dev Patel, Ben Kingsley, and Richard Ayoade deepen the film’s humor with fourth-wall-breaking performances that unfold in Anderson’s typically pleasant monotone.
Those who appreciate Anderson’s emphasis on form and playfully lengthy, straight-to-camera monologues will likely love his take on “Henry Sugar.” At the same time, those who tend to crave more heart from his work might find themselves underwhelmed and even a little bored. Clocking in at 39 minutes, this film is by far the longest in the bunch, and toward the end, I felt every single second. Anderson has made another utterly gorgeous film, with lush and tactile visuals worthy of a pop-up book. Still, the cascading stories start to feel aimless, and by the end—just like the future Yogi master who had to teach himself to concentrate on a single image for minutes at a time—I found my attention wavering.
