Unlike the Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts and Live-Action Shorts, the Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts tend to highlight difficult, tragic subject matter that makes watching them – particularly one after the other – a sometimes arduous journey. Some of this year’s nominees are lighter than others, but the majority deal in death and violence in a frank manner, confronting audiences with images and stories they may not “want” to know about, but that the filmmakers truly believe need to seen, understood and learned from. In short: they feel like homework.
But this year’s crop – reviewed in alphabetical order – contains some truly masterful storytelling, and illuminates situations both dramatically distinctive and desperately universal. Although one of the most objectively outstanding works has serious storytelling problems, they each make a significant impact on the viewer and are worthy of at least consideration by not The Academy, but by individuals and audiences who could perhaps benefit from a few more vegetables in their media diet.
Here is my look at the subject matter and filmmaking quality of this year’s five Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts: Cavedigger, Facing Fear, Karama Has No Walls, The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life and Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall.
Cavedigger
Cavedigger is the story of Ra Paulette, an artist who sculpts entire caves. He digs a hole into a soft rock face and carves hallways, benches and sitting rooms covered in meticulous engravings. The process takes years, even for a single cave, and has mostly consumed Paulette’s life: his cavedigging has ruined romantic relationships, and his perfectionism has soured most of the clients who hire him to build a cave on their property.
Cavedigger is the only nominated documentary short that isn’t about a “serious” issue, but that’s not the reason it’s the most entertaining. Cavedigger has the liveliest subject, a true artist who is both the hero and villain of his own story. He’s self-destructive even as he creates something beautiful. Director Jeffrey Karoff carves a vivid relief of his subject and finds humor, dignity and romance in Paulette’s life of servicing his creative muse. By the end of Cavedigger, one gets the distinct impression that Ra Paulette is probably going to die carving out his latest masterpiece, and that there’s probably no other way he’d rather go out.
Facing Fear
Facing Fear consists of interviews Matthew Boger, a gay man once assaulted by Neo-Nazi skinheads, and Tim Zaal, one of the skinheads who nearly killed Matthew Boger. Decades after the incident, after Zaal turned his back on racism, they met at The Museum of Tolerance and, after a shockingly dramatic conversation, realized where they had crossed paths years ago.
Director Jason Cohen lets Boger and Zaal speak for themselves, illustrating their stories with tastefully minimal archival footage of Los Angeles and a few old photographs. Facing Fear isn’t about external drama, it’s about inward journeys these two men took together even though they had no relationship for years. Zaal even thought Boger was been dead this whole time, and had been living his whole life with the belief that he was a murderer.
Facing Fear eschews harsh judgment and embraces the difficult path to forgiveness for even the most violent of crimes. It’s a noble story, efficiently told, and although it bears the unmistakable aura of a high school social studies assignment the content is significant and even universal enough to emerge as an important work.
Karama Has No Walls
There’s a thin line to walk when critiquing documentaries, since there’s an inclination to apply praise to a subject matter and ignore the actual quality of the storytelling. Karama Has No Walls has historical significance on its side, but it lacks the narrative throughline necessary to emerge as great filmmaking.
Director Sara Ishaq has compiled footage taken on the scene of a revolutionary uprising in Yemen, which began as a peaceful sit-in but detonated into horrifying violence. Punctuated by interviews with the survivors and the families of the dead, Ishaq documents in some detail the terrifying assault: the deaths of protestors on screen, the cries for justice by the blood-stained just outside the range of gunfire, the harrowing journey over the makeshift wall and into harm’s way.
The uprising documented in Karama Has No Walls eventually led to a regime change in Yemen. The events themselves are incredible enough to be warrant a film all their own. But Karama Has No Walls plays like an important “60 Minutes” segment, not a movie. The film covers such a broad swath of the events that, somehow, even the most amazing footage eventually begins to wear on the viewer, inspiring an increasing lack of involvement where instead we should by all rights be riveted. The footage was there, the assemblage lets it down, but as a historical document Karama Has No Walls remains a powerful work regardless of its deficiencies in form.
The Lady in Number 6: Music Saved My Life
Alice Sommer-Herz is 109 years old, plays beautiful classical music that can be heard by all her New York City neighbors, and she is the oldest living Holocaust survivor. But although The Lady in Number 6 is this year’s “Holocaust Documentary” (an Academy mainstay), it is a remarkably sweet story of a remarkable woman who led a remarkable life. Sommer-Herz possesses a vivid memory of her childhood association with family friend Franz Kafka (!) and speaks philosophically about her experience escaping what would have been certain death at the hands of the Third Reich due to their appreciation for her musical ability.
There’s not much to The Lady in Number 6 other than a recollection of a noteworthy life story, and that’s just fine. Director Malcolm Clarke lets his film play out like a simple appreciation of an elderly woman’s stories, only to reveal over time that those stories are truly incredible. The film’s narration is a bit distanced from the true emotion of the film, which does The Lady in Number 6 a slight disservice, and at 39 minutes the movie does begin to feel a little padded, but overall it’s a lovely look at the life of a lovely human being with much to tell us.
Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall
One of the most depressing movies you will EVER see, Prison Terminal is exactly what it says on the tin: the last, dying days of a prison inmate withering in hospice care. The subject is a maximum security inmate dying of natural causes, cared for by hospice workers who themselves are prison inmates guilty – or at least convicted – of murder and kidnapping. None of that seems to matter in the end, for the slow, arduous, and finally very sad sight of watching an old man die in a hospital bed is all too familiar to many, and only the incidental details, like the insulting need to shackle a man who can barely move, make his final days any different from the deaths of many a father before him.
On paper Prison Terminal is arguably a snuff film, but it lacks any sense of exploitation or cruelty. Nevertheless, this is a film that exists entirely to show audiences a person dying, on screen. Director Edgar Barens allows a certain sentimentality into his film but he never loses sight of the fact that his subject is a murderer, serving a prison sentence for valid reasons. He also commits to a dreary, fragile musical score that somehow makes the wholly depressing subject matter even more miserable.
There is nothing to enjoy about Prison Terminal: The Last Days of Private Jack Hall, so although it is a powerful work I cannot fully decide who it should be recommended to. The matter of fact portrayal of an old man’s demise has no entertainment value. It is a sad event and plays that way, and Barens’ mostly matter-of-fact approach imbues the film with a dour inevitability. It’s a potent document, a devastating documentary, but so hard to watch – particularly for those who, admittedly like myself, watched a loved one wither in their final days – that its very existence seems upsetting.
William Bibbiani is the editor of CraveOnline’s Film Channel and co-host of The B-Movies Podcast. Follow him on Twitter at @WilliamBibbiani.
