Live-action shorts are to feature films as short stories are to novels. You have to get in fast, establish the scene and your characters, make a limited number of points—and out you go. I wrote about the short documentaries nominated for the Oscar last week. Now that we know Curfew won the live-action category—it got my vote!—here’s why.
The other four nominees (and all the documentaries) were pretty depressing. True, Curfew opens with a young man (filmmaker Shawn Christensen) sitting in a bathtub full of bloodied water, and he’s holding a razor blade. Damage has been done. Still somehow there’s a sense of incipient redemption, because when his sister phones in desperation (“you’re last on my list”) and asks him to babysit her nine-year-old daughter for a few hours, you know he’ll say “OK.” After he cleans himself up.
The unlikely relationship between the uncle and niece develops engagingly. A true story is unfolding there. Curfew benefited from the charming, cool, and always on-point performance by Fátima Ptacek (with Christensen at left).
Two other films were about children–young boys living in impoverished circumstances (Afghanistan and Somalia) whose big dreams are hard to hold onto. In Oscar handicapping, these two cancelled each other out. Today’s U.S. child actors are vastly better trained and directed than they used to be. These boys hadn’t had that support and retained some awkwardness.
The fourth movie was about an aging gentleman, a concert pianist, facing a confusing mélange of past and present, real and unreal, as he searches for his wife. Well done, if a little too predictable and a lot too like Amour, so a no-go for this year in such a strong field, the critics agree. And the last, Death of a Shadow (right), too slow-moving and surreal, short on action and long on atmosphere and outright weirdness. Steampunk clocks, silhouettes of corpses, endless corridors, creepy teeth.
While all the short documentaries were right around 40 minutes, making for a squirmy evening in only semi-comfortable chairs, all but one of the live action shorts were half that length. Curfew packed in so much feeling and character that it was a rich experience, deep if not long. And, BTW, it was edited on Christensen’s MacBook Pro!