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dweemeister · 2 years ago

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Best Documentary Short Film Nominees for the 95th Academy Awards (2023, listed in order of appearance in the shorts package)

This blog, since 2013, has been the site of my write-ups to the Oscar-nominated short film packages – a personal tradition for myself and for this blog. This omnibus write-up goes with my thanks to the Regency South Coast Village in Santa Ana, California for providing all three Oscar-nominated short film packages (in previous years, I had to view the documentary shorts in two separate screenings due to theater policy!). Without further ado, here are the nominees for the Best Documentary Short Film at this year’s Oscars. The write-ups for the Live Action and Animated Short categories are coming later this week. Films predominantly in a language other than English are listed with their nation(s) of origin.

How Do You Measure a Year? (2021)

If the name Jay Rosenblatt rings a bell, that is because he was responsible for one of the most ethically questionable nominees in this category (at least for as long I’ve been regularly seeking the documentary shorts out) in recent times. Though How Do You Measure a Year? is far more ethical and more enjoyable a watch than When We Were Bullies (2021), this is the equivalent of sharing a polished home movie with your friends. Deriving its title from “Seasons of Love” from the musical Rent, How Do You Measure a Year? splices together footage of an annual Rosenblatt tradition. Every year, on his daughter Ella’s birthday, he asks Ella a series of questions – most are the same, year-by-year (e.g., what does she think of their daughter-father relationship, what “strength” is, what does she wish to be when she grows up, etc.) – and Ella answers. The first time this tradition appears is on Ella’s second birthday, and it concludes on her eighteenth, just before heading off to university.

There is no denying that this is an intensely personal project for the Rosenblatt family. Ella speaks fondly of this tradition at the conclusion of the final interview, and one can only imagine how loving a document it is for her parents. Yet in this short film format spread across seventeen interviews, How Do You Measure a Year? cannot hope to provide any insight about children and a child’s growth and maturation that audiences do not already know. Lacking the innovation and vision from other similar cinematic projects such as Michael Apted’s Up series (1964-2019), the latter stages of Rosenblatt’s film cannot stave off its repetitive structure and the director’s self-admitted realization that, perhaps, his questions are not as profound as he originally thought (reminding me of his former teacher’s belief in When We Were Bullies that people might not want to see his film). Rosenblatt is unfortunately correct. This film – however meaningful to the Rosenblatts and however enjoyable it might be (I am not often subject to pictures or videos of other people’s children, so my tolerance for this film was high) – sets an unwanted precedent in this category. At its core, How Do You Measure a Year? is a home movie, and should have remained so.

My rating: 6/10

The Elephant Whisperers (2022, India)

Deep in southern India in the state of Tamil Nadu lies Madumalai National Park, set aside as a wildlife reserve in 1940. There lives an elderly couple – Bomman and Belli – of the indigenous Kattunayakan tribe. Bomman and Belli, as well as elephants Raghu and Ammu, are the stars of Kartiki Gonsalves’ The Elephant Whisperers, a Netflix production. The Kattunayakan have been caring for elephants for generations – Bomman and Belli claim that their parents, grandparents, and their ancestors have grown and worked alongside elephants – and have always felt great emotional bonds with their pachyderm friends. With a forty-minute runtime whittled down from greater than 450 hours of footage, this is a gorgeously shot documentary that knows when to pull back to show us the park’s lush landscapes (one particular moment of cliffside beehives is a stunning use of drone-enabled camerawork) and the expressive and playful interactions between humans and elephants.

Gonsalves – a wildlife and cultural photographer who has dedicated herself to share stories from India’s indigenous populations – found the idea for this film during a chance encounter with Raghu in October 2017. She states in interviews that her aim with The Elephant Whisperers was to break down the perceptions that elephants are “others” to humans. In that, this film is a total triumph. What one wishes is that Gonsalves expand upon Bomman and Belli’s valuable insights into how climate change and human encroachment into natural spaces are affecting the lives of Asian elephants and the ecosystem they inhabit. In addition, it is evident that the elephants play a notable role in the spirituality of the Kattunayakan, who practice Hinduism. Though Gonsalves captures some fascinating footage of these religious ceremonies involving the elements, some context there would have helped deepen our understanding to how the likes of Bomman and Belli feel connected to Raghu and Ammu. Any attempt to help Westerners learn more about non-Abrahamic religions is always valuable, but Gonsalves elects not to do so here. The Elephant Whisperers occupies a space as neither a fully observational documentary nor a strictly educational one, satisfying only parts of both ends of that spectrum. With the characteristic Netflix digital gloss, the film remains a worthy document, but this could have used more educational and contextual substance.

My rating: 7.5/10

Stranger at the Gate (2022)

Joshua Seftel’s Stranger at the Gate has a story worth telling, but it is plagued by its focal imbalance and its incuriosity towards its main subject’s prior Islamophobia. Following twenty-five years of service in the U.S. military and multiple deployments to the Middle East during the ongoing War on Terror, Richard “Mac” McKinney returned home to Muncie, Indiana wracked with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), injury, alcohol abuse, and hatred towards Muslims. The timeline of Mac’s thought process is disappointingly unclear, but he decides to detonate an improvised explosive device (IED) at the Muncie Islamic Center during Friday prayer – fully expecting arrest, ready and raring to denounce Muslims in court. Noticing a threatening-looking Mac staking out the building, several members of the mosque’s congregation keep their friendly wits about them, and welcome him instead. This changes Mac’s mind, and he eventually converts to Islam.

Credit to Mac, an almost-mass murderer, for confronting the hatred that years of warfare in the Middle East inculcated in his psyche. And further plaudits must go to the congregants of the Muncie Islamic Center for their charity and neighborly warmth in the face of someone who, by their very admission, looked to cause harm to them. The failure of Stranger at the Gate lies not with any of the interview subjects, but the filmmaker, who fumbles the themes of the film and how to approach this story. Stranger at the Gate is primarily a dual account of how a man plans for a potential mass murder and how a collection of Indiana Muslims show kindness to prevent that mass murder from happening. This film has little to say about Mac’s racist beliefs, forged during his time in the military, and how he confronted his hatred. Stranger at the Gate almost plays into the idea that it is incumbent upon the mosque’s congregants to show kindness to a bigot in order to avoid a mass killing. The responsibility of avoiding the would-be tragedy falls primarily on the would-be terrorist, not the would-be victims. That we learn so little about the former – Mac’s unpackaging of his Islamophobia and more nuances in how he considers believes the mosque’s congregation to be his friends – severely weakens Seftel’s movie.

My rating: 6/10

Haulout (2022, Russia/United Kingdom)

On the banks of the Chukchi Sea, in far northeastern Siberia, is the simple home of Maxim Chakilev. The ocean’s mist lingers on the shore, and darkens as one gazes northward. Everything seems to be a shade of gray. Chakilev, the main subject in husband-and-wife team Maxim Arbugaev and Evgenia Arbugaeva’s Haulout, is a marine biologist who has been studying walruses and their migratory practices. For the film’s opening six minutes, we observe Chakilev go about a routine as if he is waiting for something or someone. One morning, he opens his window to find thousands of walruses on the beach, as far as he can see. It is, according some text at the film’s end, the largest walrus haulout in the world. With, at its peak, tens of thousands of walruses in close proximity to each other, there is a sense of danger that is fleeting – Chakilev goes about his research by staying in his humble abode, his protective fortress from the wildlife, and observing from his rooftop. Once the walruses leave after more than six weeks later, Chakilev emerges from his home to study the remains of deceased walruses spread across the beach.

Of this year’s slate of nominees, Haulout is the most naturalistic of the five, to the point where Arbugaev and Arbugaeva’s directorial hands are almost invisible. There are no interviews, no overt moments of directorial intervention or artistic self-consciousness. It feels, especially in its most breathtaking shots, as if it is a narrative film rather than a documentary. Haulout’s detachment from any sort of directorial artifice or messaging raises questions about its epilogue-like text before the end credits, explaining to the audience the images they have just seen. This film should be a meditation on climate change – as the melting polar ice is forcing an increasing amount of walruses to beach on Siberian shores every year, resulting in worse conditions and the greater possibility of stampedes and fighting. Instead, the film’s climate change arguments and information blurbs are relegated to a few seconds at the end. It is more a sensorial experience than an educational one. But what sights and sounds it contains.

My rating: 7.5/10

The Martha Mitchell Effect (2022)

Also on Netflix is Anne Alvergue and Debra McClutchy’s The Martha Mitchell Effect. One can find numerous pieces of cinema and television on the Watergate scandal, which toppled the Richard Nixon presidential administration. But few of them ever mention the presence of Martha Mitchell, the wife of Attorney General John Mitchell. Told entirely through archival footage and audio clips, The Martha Mitchell Effect documents Martha’s support for her husband and President Nixon as a garrulous, press-loving socialite (and the press loved her back; one imagines Martha’s talkativeness gave Nixon and his press team migraines aplenty). On the day of the Watergate break-in, Martha is ditched by Nixon and her husband while in Newport Beach, California for a campaign event. Incensed, her outspokenness about what unfolds next is Icarus-like. The Nixon administration’s attempts to silence her and the general public’s initial outrage towards her truth-telling is a media sensation, a compelling side narrative to the Watergate scandal. In an era in American politics when women were frowned upon by speaking about politics at all (and this remains to some extent), Mitchell is a firebrand. Her death shortly after Nixon’s resignation has mostly consigned her story to contemporary obscurity.

If one is looking for a hellraising liberal truth-teller, look elsewhere. Mitchell is staunchly a Nixonian Republican, and I would question the analytical skills of anyone who thinks otherwise after seeing this film. With enough material for a documentary feature, The Martha Mitchell Effect moves at a breakneck pace, and it has little time to explain the Watergate scandal to anyone without a scant idea about its implications. The absence of present-day voices reflecting upon Mitchell’s de facto role in the Nixon administration and that in Nixon’s downfall leads to a rather abrupt conclusion and no modern-day perspectives (an aside: I struggle to think of anyone occupying an analogous position in American politics today). The Martha Mitchell Effect’s editing is perfunctory, without surprises – a shame for a film relying so heavily on archival material. Instead, the film gets by mostly on the force of Martha Mitchell’s personality and screen presence. She is incandescent as a politico; a pity that the filmmaking cannot rise to such levels.

My rating: 7/10

^ Based on my personal imdb rating. My interpretation of that ratings system can be found in the “Ratings system” page on my blog (as of July 1, 2020, tumblr is not permitting certain posts with links to appear on tag pages, so I cannot provide the URL).

From previous years: 88th Academy Awards (2016), 89th (2017), 90th (2018), 91st (2019), 92nd (2020), 93rd (2021) and 94th (2022).

For more of my reviews tagged “My Movie Odyssey”, check out the tag of the same name on my blog.

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