With the last five winners being films distributed by Netflix, Sony Animation Studios and Pixar (twice), plus one produced by Kobe Bryant, a high profile is no longer a detriment in a category that was once a haven for small animators. But the Netflix/Aardman film Robin Robin is really the only major-company nominee, with the others coming from Wales, Chile, Russia and Spain.
Affairs of the Art
Beryl, the main character in Joanna Quinn’s new film, has appeared in other films by the British animator who was nominated for Famous Fred 23 years ago—and her continuing presence in the Quinn canon makes sense, since there’s some thinly disguised and wickedly exaggerated autobiography in the character. The most flat-out comedy of the nominees, the film is an exuberant chronicle of a free spirit who is obsessed with drawing and also loves pet taxidermy and flinging her painted nude body on a canvas. “It’s me breaking out of years and years of doing commercials,” Quinn has said.
Bestia
Like Bear Story, the 2015 Oscar winner in this category, Bestia examines Chilean history through the medium of animation. Using stop-motion techniques and a lead character whose head resembles a china doll, director Hugo Covarrubias has created a dark and disturbing chronicle of a woman whose daily rituals are steeped in paranoia. “Inside every beast lives a victim,” Covarrubias said. “I believe that in this case, Ingrid is also a kind of victim of the totalitarian machine that reigned in Chile in the ’70s during the military dictatorship, so we think so much about the banality of evil.”
Boxballet
This Russian film is a case study in “opposites attract,” as it chronicles the relationship between a boxer and a ballet dancer. Director Anton Dyakov adjusts the animation to suit his characters—brutal and blocky for the boxer, lithe and elegant for the ballet dancer—but he also has fun with the clash of cultures embodied in the relationship, whether it’s Evgeny (the boxer) sitting uncomfortably at the ballet or the happy couple trying to negotiate courtship rituals like roller skating and ice cream.
Robin Robin
With Disney’s Us Again failing to make it off the shortlist, Robin Robin is probably the category’s most widely seen film by virtue of its distribution on Netflix. The story of a young bird raised by a family of mice, it’s also a product of the British animation house Aardman, which has had great success at the Oscars over the years. “We both love the tradition of the Christmas animated short film, especially here in the U.K.,” said Dan Ojari, who directed the musical film with Mikey Please. “It’s a unique stage that can break past the niche audience that short films sometimes have.” And stop-motion, Please added, will always be their medium of choice. “There is something about the undeniable tangibility of what you’re seeing on screen that lets you see the artists’ fingerprints on stop-motion films.”
The Windshield Wiper
Director Alberto Mielgo’s 15-minute film is a sprawling and haunting meditation on the question, “What is love?” “It’s a very abstract question, and society’s ideas about love are mutating and changing dramatically,” said Mielgo, who worked on the film for seven years in between his jobs on projects like Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse and TRON: Uprising. Concrete at times and abstract at others, it creates a kind of visual poetry out of the jumble of modern living. And while it looks as if it’s animated over live footage, that’s not the case. “I developed this style over years,” he said. “Because I was self-taught, I didn’t have any idea what I was doing, and this is what evolved.”
Steve’s Perspective
Back when you couldn’t vote in the category unless you’d seen all the films at an in-person Academy screening, this award usually went to the most personal of the nominees. These days it’s harder to track voters’ tastes, but Robin Robin could get Netflix its second win in the category and Aardman its fourth—if the drama and distinctive style of The Windshield Wiper, the self-deprecating humor of Affairs of the Art or the political import of Bestia don’t feel more personal to voters. In an unpredictable category, it feels like Robin vs. Windshield.
