My Personal Ranking For the Oscar Nominated Animated Short Films of 2023
I got to watch these shorts in a local theater yesterday, and it was quite a spectacular time.
Note: I am not ranking these based on the quality of the film, but based on how much I personally liked the film. There is definitely a difference. I have come to terms with the fact that I sometimes don’t personally like media that is Objectively Good, and sometimes get unfortunately invested in things that are questionable quality.
With that out of the way, let’s delve in.
1. The Boy, the Mole, the Fox, and the Horse
I, too, am surprised that this was my favorite of the short films. Dare I say, I feel a bit basic. Perhaps I’ll hang up a Live, Laugh, Love sign next.
I’m especially surprised, because I actually have more critiques regarding it than I do with other short films that I liked less. Specifically, the dialogue could sound like platitudes, which is a pet peeve of mine with any media.
But it’s absolutely beautiful. It’s among the most beautiful animation I’ve ever seen, and seeing it on the big screen was nothing short of an emotional experience.
The animation and designs made me love each character, and made the dialogue – which, in a less beautiful film, might have been enough to put me off liking it – feel heartfelt. I can’t praise the creative team behind this film enough for the manner in which they brought these characters to life. The voice performances are also commendable.
Perhaps most importantly, it put me in touch with my inner child. Wizard of Oz, Jungle Book, James and the Giant Peach, Spirited Away, Kubo – there is a timeless impulse among children, it would seem, to be befriended and loved by benevolent talking animals or fantastical creatures.
It is perhaps because of my inner child that I love this film so much. My childhood self might have been oblivious to the beautifully simplistic depth of Ice Merchants, the blink-and-you-miss-it beats that make The Flying Sailor so meaningful, bewildered by My Year of Dicks, and existentially terrified by An Ostrich Told Me the World Is Fake, but my desire for a big white talking horsey is timeless and powerful.
Where to watch it: Apple TV+
This one is just. So unspeakably funny. And, despite the fact that I’m a raging Sapphic who’s never been interested in the dicks available to me, I found it intensely relatable.
This may be a controversial statement, but I find that mainstream Hollywood’s attempts to nail down the Female Gaze are often more obnoxious than the Male Gaze itself. Partially because it often revolves around what male executives think The Modern Woman™ finds appealing, rather than an actual understanding of the female experience. The Male Gaze, at the very least, feels somewhat organic and based in the personal experience of the filmmakers.
This – this felt like the Female Gaze. A truly organic trip through the psychology, impulses, and emotions of a fifteen-year-old girl. It treated its female protagonist not as unknowable, but as relatable, with the five unpleasant male characters she was approaching as Other – each in five wildly entertaining ways. And it was glorious.
The way the main character dramatized her experiences – making full use of the animated world in which she lived – was something I could relate to viscerally. I’m reluctant to mention anything else about the plot, as I truly encourage everyone to just experience it firsthand. It’s heartfelt, exquisitely ‘90s, and a beautiful animated tribute to teenhood and questionable decisions.
Where to watch it: Vimeo, Hulu
Such a beautiful and emotional experience. I would say that this film demonstrates that less is more, but really, it demonstrates that the illusion of less is more. In reality, this film is teaming with detail, from the beautifully textured ice and misty landscape below, to the subtle indications of the characters’ recently experienced loss.
I was so entranced by the visual beauty and surrealist elements of this film, it took me a while to grasp its actual storyline: subtle clues, presented by a yellow mug, indicate the loss of the ice merchant’s wife and the mother of his son, and the cold world in which they live comes to represent their grief.
Without giving much away, the film ends with a view of a spring landscape, representing the eventual thaw of this grief as father and son begin to heal.
This beautiful and strange animation is based off of a true story, in which a sailor was flung 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) by the Halifax explosion in 1917, and lived to tell about it.
This film is essentially the sailor’s life flashing before his eyes as he soars, naked, over the exploding landscape. We get to know his character through the blink-and-you-miss-it moments that we witness of his life.
My favorite moment of the film was when he lights a cigarette at the same instant a ship in the harbor (unbeknownst to him, full of dynamite) catches fire. His – and our – quiet shock as we realize what we’re looking at is haunting. He even steps on the match, as if in a subconscious effort to put out the blaze, just as the contents of the ship explodes and nearly ends his life.
Where to watch it: YouTube
5. An Ostrich Told Me The World Is Fake and I Think I Believe It
Just because I rank this film last doesn’t mean it isn’t good. It’s incredibly good, and an inventive way to portray a character’s existential crisis through a stop-motion medium.
Ultimately, this is a story about a man realizing how meaningless his life has become while working at an unfulfilling office job. But that makes the film sound way more mundane than it actually is. The way in which this existential crisis is portrayed is through the main character realizing that he and his fellow workers are all stop-motion puppets, after he is visited by the titular ostrich.
And I do like it a great deal, but the reason for it subjectively ranking below the other films is the simple fact that the other films left me with a more positive emotional feeling. This one…is kind of terrifying.
I wonder if the director was inspired by the 1965 stop motion The Hand, in which a gloved human hand is used as a source of horror in the world of a stop motion puppet. In a similar manner, human hands look uncanny in this film when contrasted with the main character and his puppet world.
Anyway, go watch it and have an existential crisis of your own. I recommend it.
Have you seen the animated shorts? Let me know your personal ranking!
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