Last week I pored through the animated and live action short films that find themselves in Oscar contention this year in order to help give a leg up in your Oscar pools. Over the weekend, I decided to take a good, long look at the nominated documentary shorts, which rarely find any coverage this time of year. I can’t be the only that gets tired of taking blind stabs at who’ll win in this category, so here’s what I turned up…
There are four nominees in the category, as usual. And two of the films are strikingly similar in tone and subject matter, doubly so in the face of the year’s likely Oscar sweeper, “Slumdog Millionaire.”
Megan Mylan’s “Smile Pinki” covers pro bono palate lip surgery in rural India, but it isn’t that dissimilar from any number of 60-minute infomercials you’ve come across on television. Also, Oscar.com’s brief synopsis of the film suggests more drama than actually exists. It could win for being a heart-warming affair because it really is the story of newfound hope in the social lives of young children, but I found it a bit derivative.
Irene Taylor Brodskey’s “The Final Inch,” however, is a much more intriguing look at the country, following the work of volunteers mobilizing efforts (the largest non-military army in history) to eradicate polio in the slums of India. From a cultural standpoint, it is at times quite fascinating. Some families refuse the “medical wisdom” of the West in favor of faith in their God, leaving a very simple vaccination process ignored and many young children crippled at an early age for no good reason.