“The Oracle” by JJ Adler (“New Media”)
A skeptic, a hippie and a felon claiming Dissociative Identity Disorder all walk into a bar …
Dr. Conrad Smolinsky (Kurt Fuller, “Psych”) is a psychiatrist by day and a crotchety old man by night, tormented by the swarm of bohemians dancing around his free-spirited neighbor’s fire pit. Conrad is at his wit’s end with the imagination of his current patient, Mark (Brandon Scott Jones, “The Good Place”), a convicted con artist claiming to be mentally unfit. It is not until a hypnotherapy session with Mark reveals a strange message from Conrad’s dead twin brother that he begins to shake off his skepticism of spirituality.
Elements of fantasy and absurd circumstances juxtapose the banal, orderly rhythm of Conrad’s life, injecting the film with an experimental and refreshing flavor that pairs well with its inspired humor. When we first meet Mark, he is sitting cross-legged and speaking in a high-pitched voice. He flippantly corrects Conrad and tells him to call him Myrtle — zoom out to reveal a blinking ankle monitor and an exasperated Conrad. The dialogue of “The Oracle” is rhythmic and snappy, volleying back and forth like a witty, sharp-tongued tennis ball. Fuller, who has historically deferred leading roles, flexes his acting muscles to nail both the comedy and the complicated needs of personifying a man riddled with exhaustion, grief and desperation.
“Sauna Sickness” by Malin Barr (“Evergreen”)
“Sauna Sickness,” inspired by Barr’s personal experience, is a nightmare oscillating between two moods: hot and cold. This short opens on a handsome couple, Cleo (Thea Sofie Loch Næss, “The Ugly Stepsister”) and Tobias (Adam Lundgren, “Blue Eyes”), fleeing the warmth of an idyllic, isolated cabin nestled in the snowy forest. They brave the cold in nothing more than thin robes and clogs fit for spring, running like hell for the outdoor sauna. Inside, Cleo and Tobias engage in sweaty, short-lived sex. With sharp wood digging into her back and the prospect of climaxing more out of reach than her boyfriend’s compassion, Cleo is left unsatisfied. They return to the cabin, only to find it locked — inside are their keys, phones and warm clothes. The couple stands in the cold, in the company of their strained connection.
You might be thinking these are the perfect ingredients for a team-building, spark-rekindling exercise. Wrong. What follows instead is verbal abuse, manipulation and a nausea-inducing interaction with a pair of strangers. “Sauna Sickness” pulls Cleo between the tenderness and harshness of her partner, of nature and, briefly, of society, a painful game of tug of war, never suffering from inertia. Barr’s filmmaking is quick, pointed and sophisticated. Not a single moment is wasted — each shot is compositionally beautiful; each word, look and shift in body language nourishes intrigue; and each seamless transition between moods is controlled by tight direction. Tensions freeze and boil over, catalyzed by extreme weather, revealing a horror truer and greater than being stuck in sub-zero temperatures: a narcissist.
“Living with a Visionary” by Stephen P. Neary (“The Fungies”)
The only animated film in this program was also the only film to be drowned out by collective sniffles and sobs. “Living with a Visionary” is based on a letter written by John Mattias published by The New Yorker in February 2021. It details his 50-year marriage to his wife Diana, whom he lost to COVID-19 and who suffered from hallucinations as a side effect of the medication used to treat her Parkinson’s disease. Neary’s film is a poignant, utterly staggering tribute to Diana’s memory and their marriage — breathing life into the vivid illusions left to John as mere memories in her wake. Thousands of hand-drawn, still images accompanied by the very human narration of James Cromwell (“L.A. Confidential”) sew a tapestry of imagination, love and grief.
There is an opera in the backyard, a man with no legs, a personified flower, a rude man masturbating into a drawer of her dresser. Diana’s world explodes with color and randomness, a reality no one other than Neary could bring us into with such delicacy and kindness. We are grounded by Cromwell’s narration — John’s words — a steady voice guiding us through Diana’s reality, one we befriend and long to understand as she did so fully. We are struck by our own lack of imagination, suddenly reminded of our own transience. “Life is like morning dew” is written in Chinese characters, visible on a wall of the Matthias home in the film.
“Living with a Visionary” is a sobering and moving reminder of the impermanence of life, of mind and of body. Even love, when it takes the form of another, is as mortal as morning dew.
“Pankaja” by Anoonya Swamy (“Blue Cardinals”)
“Pankaja” is both Swamy’s debut film and one of her New York University graduate school projects — an astonishingly beautiful short that boasts the craftsmanship and wisdom of a far more experienced filmmaker. It is a stunning portrayal of life in Bangalore, India, as a single, impoverished mother — a “walk down memory lane,” as Swamy called it — capturing, with graphic precision, the open wound of stolen and withheld autonomy. The film begins with Pankaja (Harshini Boyalla, “Nisha”) bringing a missing persons case to the chief of police after not receiving contact from her husband for three days. She sits with Lalli (Padmashree G, debut), her young daughter, pleading for help. The chief waves her away, citing needs for his attention elsewhere. Swamy cuts to the chief being fed cake by hand, then to mother and daughter sleeping on a mattress on the floor, water dripping from the ceiling onto Pankaja’s face.
Pankaja and Lalli embark on a journey to find Lalli’s father themselves, persevering through discrimination and constant dismissal, perpetually surrounded by either the hum of swarming flies or the drip of their leaking ceiling. Swamy impressively punctuates worry, grief, resolution, hunger and childlike wonder — each with heavy emotion and subtle filmmaking. We reckon with the small tragedies of systemic failure through Pankaja’s eyes, we admire Pankaja’s small acts of heroism through Lalli’s eyes and we witness the quiet embrace of mother and daughter against ugliness and hardship through our own.
“Candy Bar” by Nash Edgerton (“Gringo”)
“Candy Bar” is a gag that begins with an innocent remark: “You look like my dad.” After being coerced into buying overpriced concessions at a movie theater by his girlfriend (Andrea Demetriades, “Around the Block”), Brian (Damon Herriman, “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood”) encounters a little girl (Zumi Edgerton, debut) in line. She stares up at him in awe and tells him that she never got to say goodbye to her father, who passed away. It’s enough to make a grown man cry (which it does), enough to make him contemplate having children of his own just moments later (which he does). But irony has another fate in store for Brian.
Coming in at just about six minutes, “Candy Bar” is a short, unsuspecting capsule of humor and delight. It is carried reliably by the witty and amusing delivery of Herriman — also the man responsible for writing the short script — and never overstays its welcome. If only the film hadn’t been competing with such impassioned entries, then Edgerton might have left a stronger impression.
“La Tierra del Valor” by Cristina Constantini (“Sally”)
“Doing the right thing isn’t always going to feel safe … but it will always feel right.”
Latin-American singer Nezza (Vanessa Hernandez, debut) was born to immigrant parents of Dominican and Colombian descent and encouraged from a very young age to nurture her desire to perform on stage. Constantini documents Nezza’s journey as she struggles to reckon with her identity and future as a performer while her community is being tormented by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids. When she is invited to perform at the Los Angeles Dodgers Stadium, she must find the courage to use this opportunity as one for protest.
“La Tierra del Valor” (“The Home of the Brave”) is a celebration of immigrant stories, championing bravery in a time of heavy censorship, cowardice and exploring grief and action as responses to the widespread violence plaguing the U.S. But where Constantini’s storytelling struggles is in its conflation of stardom with immigrant recognition. All storytelling requires keen attention to minutes, being chiefly defined by what you choose to share and withhold. But especially in short-form documentary filmmaking, the subject and substance of each moment of storytelling crucially control a film’s message. With so much time spent on Nezza highlighting her vocal and dance abilities and such little with the reality of the presence of ICE in LA — save for the occasional splicing of disturbing footage of violent ICE operations and Nezza’s commentary — some of Nezza’s message regrettably loses its impact.
Daily Arts Writer Maya Ruder can be contacted at mayarud@umich.edu.
