Tropic Sprockets / The 2024 Oscar Shorts: Live Action

By Ian Brockway

This year the Live Action shorts are a downcast bunch with one exception. That being said, the films are emotive and well produced. Each one deals with human relationships and pathos, the pitfalls of being human. With each drama, one travels the world.

First, from filmmaker Misan Harriman is “The After.” It is punchy, claustrophobic, and highly psychological. A businessman (David Oyelowo) in London is out with his daughter on a terrace. Suddenly, without warning, a man with a knife, stabs the girl in a terrorist act and throws her from the terrace. Her mom overcome with horror (understandably so) leaps from the terrace to her death. The man is obliterated by grief.

Months later, the grieving man is now an Uber driver. He is on the track of coping. One day he picks up a bickering couple with a daughter that looks striking like the daughter that he lost. During the couple’s exit, the daughter hugs the man’s waist, and he collapses in a puddle of tears beside himself. He wails and wails on and on. This short percussive film definitely takes you by surprise and pulls no punches. It is definitely the highlight of the selections.

From director Nazrin Choudhury, “Red White and Blue” is subtle and sneaky, tackling the very topical subject of abortion. This film is full of rich and understated performances, and definitely haunts. Brittany Snow and Julia Donenfeld have a great chemistry as mother and daughter, respectively, and the last development packs a Hitchcockian surprise.

“Knight of Fortune” by Lasse Lyskjær Noer evokes the grim spirit of Samuel Beckett. A man Karl (Leif Andrée) who recently visited the corpse of his deceased wife meets another man Torben (Jens Jørn Spottag) with uncannily similar experiences. Both of them go from room to room, taking part in the memorial services of strangers. Understated with monosyllabic dialogue, this one is a bit of a chore. The two men recall Estragon and Pozzo attempting to tolerate the absurdity of existence when everything is cold and gray.

“Invincible” by director Vincent René-Lortie is the hard unforgiving story of a juvenile delinquent named Marc (Léokim Beaumier-Lépine) who is completely and totally consumed with anger, yet with a soft spot for his sister. This brief unsparing tale will remind you of the novels of Jean Genet. Day after day, Marc is consumed with escape, yet he boils with the heart of a poet in writing class. No matter. The world is against him. There is great power in the face of the actor (Beaumier-Lépine), and he holds the screen, and indeed the entire short by himself. It is based on a true story.

Lastly, by the eccentric Wes Anderson is a brief story originally penned by Roald Dahl “The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar.” Here Dahl (Ralph Fiennes) relates the story of the magical Henry Sugar (Benedict Cumberbatch) a man who learns to attain x-ray vision through the means of meditation. Visually playful and unapologetically florid, the film is a moving pop-up book, full of eccentric characters and madcap whimsy. The manic staccato dialogue becomes a bit too much to handle, almost reaching the heights of Monty Python and Stephen Colbert all at once. Verbal overload. Ben Kingsley plays a levitating mystic. Despite its methamphetamine monologues, devotees of Anderson and Dahl should be well pleased.

Though this year is somber, the characters are invariably rich, and the drama is full of tension. Together, the group creates a master class in acting.

Write Ian at [email protected]

[livemarket market_name="KONK Life LiveMarket" limit=3 category=“” show_signup=0 show_more=0]