Our Uniform is, for me, the least of them, but that may be mostly due to its brevity: it barely seems to have time to get going, and suddenly it's wrapping up (feeling abrupt in the process). The animation, however, is terrific -- using various fabrics to partly tell its story -- and it's a graceful piece, as far as it goes.
I think War Is Over is nicely enough done, with some lovely images. I can't say it strikes me as anything especially new -- "grunts from opposite sides find communication amidst war" is a pretty well-worn idea by now -- and I'm puzzled why so many seem to think it's the favorite. (Is it just the John & Yoko connection?) But perfectly likable.
I really liked the early, classroom section of Letter to a Pig, for its multi-dimensionality: the writer trying to convey his life experience, the apathetic class to whom it means nothing, the one super-achiever student who dives into it whole. And I thought the animation was really unique and imaginative. The second half plunge into empathy didn't work as well for me -- I found myself drifting -- but there's still a lot there. A worthy contender.
Okay, I'm going to have to go into SPOILERS -- I MEAN IT, SPOILERS; GO AWAY IF YOU HAVEN'T WATCHED THE FILM to respond to this comment.anonymous1980 wrote: ↑Mon Jan 29, 2024 10:19 pm Pachyderme is about a little girl who vacations in her grandparents' house. This is an artfully executed short which has a disturbing undertone that may bother a few viewers (and voters). (B)
ONCE AGAIN: SPOILERS.
I had a peculiar experience watching Pachyderme. I was looking at it on my computer,and, first time through, had issues with the subtitles: a second set kept appearing over the main ones, and I was expending so much effort trying to keep up with the dialogue, I didn't get the whole gist of the story. Which turned out pretty crucial, because the action in Pachderme is pretty ephemeral, and the meaning of it lies almost entirely in subtext.
See, when I watched a second time, I came pretty clearly to think this film is about a now-grown woman coming to terms with the fact she was molested by her grandfather. (THAT'S THE SPOILER PART) This is never articulated in the film proper, but there are hints all through the 11-minute running time: The girl's dread at her parents' departure. Her fear of her room late at night, and her grandmother's overly emphatic "what could happen to you there?" Her attempt at making herself invisible by fading into the wall. Her grandfather's kissing of her cut, and her detailed memory of his saliva. His insistence she swim in her underwear. His taking her out late at night, staying so long that even the grandmother worries. The door opening in the late overnight hours, suggesting a monster arriving. And, after the fact: the tusk broken in two (could there be a more direct phallic symbol?), and the girl's refusal to visit her grandmother even after the grandfather's gone -- punishing her for not protecting her?
The miraculous thing about all this is how clearly this emerged without any of it being made explicit. A truly remarkable, poetic work, one I'd be happy to see win.
But I'd also feel very good if The Five Senses won, another film that was full of surprises. It started out like it was going to be an old guy's ruminations structured around the five senses...and, given his memories to some degree gibe with mine, I was plenty ready to enjoy that. But then the story took a sharp, unexpected narrative turn, which took the film to another level. And it didn't stop there: it kept going new places, providing new perspective -- yet, the whole time, keeping within the five senses framework, which I thought was pretty remarkable. A really lovely piece of work.
I'm honestly pretty agnostic about the outcome of this race.
