Oscar Short Docs

In anticipation of tomorrow’s awards show I watched the five nominated Documentary Shorts and rate them as follows:

1. The Martha Mitchell Effect. The only traditional historical documentary in the field, this was a refreshing recapitulation of the time the Attorney General’s wife captured the spotlight for herself, by speaking out to the press, calling Nixon on his phone, wrong-siding the Administration on Vietnam and more famously Watergate, then being muzzled by the GOP and divorced by her husband. It was great fun to revisit this bit of history, when an ethical lapse could bring a President down.
2. The Elephant Whisperers. Gorgeous nature photography and a glimpse of a totally foreign world: an obscure, isolated elephant rehabilitation center in India with a leading man that looked, acted and sounded like an Australian aborigine.
3. Haulout. A remarkable study of an isolated Russian marine biologist spending autumn in a hut surrounded by walrus. The only explication came with the credits and it was anticlimactic: if the loss of 600 walrus out of a pack estimated at 100,000 is the worst effect of climate change, then what are we worried about?
4. How Do You Measure A Year? This rates only because it’s a cute idea: taking a video of your daughter answering questions on every birthday from 2 to 18. But really, this was more a home movie than an Oscar candidate.
5. Stranger At the Gate. Maybe the first five minutes provided a context I missed, but the story of an Afghan War veteran in Muncie, Indiana, who goes from planning to bomb the local Islamic Center to adopting the Muslim faith wasn’t terribly well made and was boring.