Peter LoPilato, founder of the Bloomington Ryder Film Series and its accompanying magazine, was an almost immeasurable influence on the Bloomington arts community. Recounting his entire legacy would be an overwhelming task for anybody. But one of his small achievements was Ryder’s yearly screening of each of the Academy Award nominated short films — that is, all 15 of the short documentary, animated and live-action narratives.
The last time the IU Cinema presented these pictures was in 2012, but this year — the first year without LoPilato — the theater is officially taking on the mantle. This past Sunday, the cinema screened the five Oscar-nominated short documentaries: “Instruments of a Beating Heart,” “Incident,” “I Am Ready, Warden,” “The Only Girl in the Orchestra” and “Death by Numbers.”
These pictures — the longest, “I Am Ready, Warden,” is still only 37 minutes — might not provide enough content for any traditional, full-length review, but they’re still more than worth discussing. With that being said, here are five short reviews for five short films.
‘Instruments of a Beating Heart’
The first film of this series is undoubtedly the most lighthearted, and it’s partly for this reason that it worked as such a wonderful overture. Distributed by The New York Times, the film follows a group of first-graders at a Tokyo elementary school who are practicing for a performance of “Ode to Joy” for the next semester’s incoming students. It specifically focuses on Ayame, a young girl who struggles throughout the film to keep up with her peers as she tries to learn the part of the cymbal.
There’s really not a whole lot to say here, but that isn’t for a lack of quality. It’s simply a fantastic depiction of children just being children. They cry when things go wrong, they shout and clap when things go their way. It’s fun and cute and heartwarming, but it’s, unfortunately, the one of the bunch with the least substance.
‘Incident’
Going straight to this film from “Instruments of a Beating Heart” is an insane tonal whiplash in the best way possible. While that film was very interested in sound — the sound of the characters, yes, but most obviously the sound of the music — “Incident” is, for large swathes of the runtime, totally silent. There’s even a note at the beginning of the film indicating such.
“Incident” is a purely journalistic work, distributed by The New Yorker. There’s no commentary, no discernible theme tying the visuals together. The film seeks to piece together the events leading up to, during and after the killing of Harith Augustus by Chicago police in 2018. It’s purely a collection of raw footage and raw audio, some from surveillance cameras on the street and some from police body cams.
Bill Morrison, the project’s director, knew there was little reason to embellish the primary sources that already existed. All he needed to do was to edit it together, present it as is and allow the audience to draw their own conclusions. It just so happens the actions on-screen are so obviously heinous that it takes little more than what we already have to demonstrate that.
‘I Am Ready, Warden’
For what it’s worth, “I Am Ready, Warden,” is my favorite of the five nominations and the one I’m, ultimately, rooting for to win. My first instinct is to call it powerful, but even that feels like an understatement. The film documents the last days in the life of John Henry Ramirez, a death row inmate in Texas who was convicted for murder in 2008. But it also follows Aaron Castro, the son of the man whom Ramirez killed.
Ramirez is interesting because it’s clear in the film that he resents what he’s done and resents the person he was. He’s a clear demonstration of the fluidity of human nature, of the ability for humans to do even the most horrific actions given the exact right material circumstances. Ramirez knew what he did was unforgivable, that he should be punished for his actions, but the film tackles one of the most important moral questions head on: Does all of this mean that someone deserves to die? Can someone be a better person over time, even after committing something that’s so atrocious?
I cried multiple times throughout “I Am Ready, Warden” — which is named after Ramirez’s last words — both for the pain Castro feels and the lifelong mental trial Ramirez had to contend with. It’s an intensely humanist picture that invites not sympathy with a killer but an understanding of the human condition.
‘The Only Girl in the Orchestra’
Like “Instruments of a Beating Heart,” Molly O’Brien’s “The Only Girl in the Orchestra” is a lighthearted feature which, for that reason, stands out among the nominees. It’s also music-based too, which is a nice coincidence.
Orin O’Brien, the film’s subject, was the first female musician in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, hired by Leonard Bernstein in 1966. The documentary, directed by her niece, focuses on her current life in retirement, as she both reflects on her career in whole and also her present role as primarily a teacher. Though she doesn’t want to be in the spotlight, O’Brien is a natural star and is about as perfect of a leading character as one would want in a documentary. It makes a lot of sense that her parents — George O’Brien and Marguerite Churchill — were both successful movie actors.
Regrettably, as well-made as it is, “The Only Girl in the Orchestra” is also like “Instruments of a Beating Heart” in that I have little to actually say about it. It’s a very cool film, stylistically, and I enjoyed watching O’Brien speak about her life and interact with everyone around her. But it’s hardly the sort of impactful project so many of these other films are. It’s still worth watching on Netflix, however, should one ever have the chance.
‘Death by Numbers’
The last film presented of the group is a somber one, but it’s vitally important. It’s based on a set of diaries from Sam Fuentes, a survivor of the 2018 Parkland high school shooting, that she wrote as she was getting ready to testify at the trial of the shooter. I realized while I was watching it that we had just come up on the seventh anniversary of the event, which occurred on Valentine’s Day. It’s a chilling documentary in every sense of the word, but it’s a story that was desperate to be told.
Kim A. Snyder, the film’s director, makes the intentional choice to obscure the shooter’s face throughout the documentary — quite literally with a bold X or scribble line over it. That is, until a decisive moment at the end, when Fuentes speaks to him directly and reminds him, over and over again, that he will never forget her face. Researchers have found that the average person can remember up to 10,000 distinct faces in their lifetime: for the assailant of the Parkland shooting, who will spend his life in prison, it’s nearly impossible for him to ever reach that number. He simply cannot forget Fuentes, just as she’s unlikely to ever forget him.
