We begin, as we always do, with the Oscar slates that aren’t duty-bound to at least some measure of fealty to the all-important best picture race: the shorts. Or, if you prefer, the categories that are actually fun to predict, not least because they often include some of the best and worst movies nominated for an Academy Award, and the discourse surrounding them hasn’t yet gotten stale or meme’d to death. (Here’s looking at you, Lydia Tár.)
Speaking of things that have us giving the side-eye—and as a person of broadly Scandinavian descent, I feel at ease committing this to print—Eirik Tveiten’s Night Ride is the closest that this year’s crop comes to wiping out in a blitz of unearned good intentions. A Midnight Sun-set parable in which a meek little person (Sigrid Kandal Husjord) who can’t wait the half-hour it seems to take a light-rail conductor to complete his bathroom break, the short takes a nosedive into British Arrows territory when the protagonist jumps into the drivers’ seat and takes the two-car train on a semi-enchanted excursion. Cute as the premise is, it quickly detours into Paul Haggisland when a group of bullies target a trans passenger (Ola Hoemsnes Sandum). And the short’s twee, protracted punchline had this panel musing that it really needed at least one more social injustice to be committed on that ride to persuade voters to choo-choo-choose it.
Injustice also anchors the short filling this year’s suspense slot, which was filled in recent years by White Eye, Fauve, DeKalb Elementary, and Everything Will Be Okay. Those up on their Oscar history won’t fail to note that none of those titles won their respective contests, and the overall lack of specificity reflected in Cyrus Neshvad’s The Red Suitcase—a breathless snapshot of an Iranian child bride (Nawelle Ewad) attempting to escape her fate at Luxembourg Airport—makes us feel confident that it won’t buck that trend, regardless of its formal achievements. The same goes double for Anders Walter and Pipaluk K. Jørgensen’s Ivalu, a rare return visit for a previous winner in this category that had us marveling over how Walter, the director of the anti-charmer Helium, found a way to lean even harder on suffering children.
In the end, it feels like the category comes down to the two lightest entries. Le Pupille has a pedigree nearly unparalleled for a contender here (directed by Alice Rohrwacher, produced by Alfonso Cuarón, premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, distributed by Disney+, and featuring a cameo by Valeria Bruni Tedeschi), not to mention a phalanx of singing orphans and even cuter nuns. And somehow the short never overdoses on sugar even when it literally slices into a cake made of original sin and plates it in front of the most pie-eyed child.
But it’s in our DNA as Oscar prognosticators to pay attention (yes, even in these non-best picture-adjacent categories) to what’s going on at the mainstage. And Tom Berkeley and Ross White’s quirky-if-not-snarky An Irish Goodbye, which, we hasten to note, is the sole English-language contender here (never a hindrance), sure does feel locked in step with The Banshees of Inisherin, the film most expect to give Everything Everywhere All at Once its strongest competition on Oscar night. And the climax of this Letterboxd user’s intemperate review, in which he accuses the film of being “written by an AI that’s watched every single GREEN BOOK-type Oscar winner in cinema history,” only steels our resolve.
Will Win: An Irish Goodbye
Could Win: Le Pupille
Should Win: Le Pupille
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