A few weeks ago the Oscars came and went with mostly positive reviews. There were no slaps or wrong announcements in fact it was hailed as a success. This came as welcomed news for the Academy as it has been a rather rough stretch of shows the last few years. Even bigger for the Academy was that not only was the show a broadcasting and entertainment success but their choices were hailed as consistent and dare I say correct. I know shocker, the Academy picked the right people to win, what a world we live in. However, now that we are a few weeks removed and my daze of excitement from Gosling's dazzling “I'm Just Ken” performance is gone, I have one major complaint about what I thought was the biggest snub of the night.
Usually the public gets up in arms about things like best picture or best actor, these are the categories that most are at least a little bit educated on. This means upsets like Shakespeare in Love winning over Saving Private Ryan are almost always the big story. In smaller categories when there are upsets or movies that win for less noble reasons like financial backing and campaigning rather than strength of the film they often get overlooked because it’s likely most people haven't seen as many entries in the given category. This year we had such an event. For casual viewers it likely flew under the radar when it was announced War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and & Yoko beat Ninety-Five Senses for best short animation. I however think this was a big mistake.
The winning short film clearly by its name had tremendously powerful names behind it. True legends of the art industry. However the real shame is that the short film while well animating its story ultimately falls flat due to its message which is nonsensical to anyone that understands the nature of war and almost offensive to anyone who has been affected by it. Overall War Is Over! Inspired by the Music of John and & Yoko comes across as mild and offering little in a category that had many more worthy nominees. However the pursuit of this is not to trash or belittle the film that won it is to highlight a film that likely should have won.
Ninety-Five Senses does the absolute most in its almost 14 minute runtime. Firstly the animation is phenomenal, never focusing too long on one style. The short often jumps from style to style when presenting the different emotions to give each one its own shine. This method of switching up animation could have and has gone wrong before but in this case it’s a stroke of brilliance that really gives life to a film. On top of the excellent animation there is actually something to be learned as far as the senses. One will likely leave this film going “huh I had never thought about that before.” This short teaches a variety of things about the senses from how cell phones are affecting our eyes to how the senses go when we die. It is these two things, the animation and fact based aspects, that really set a strong base for what is special about this particular short film which is the story within it.
The story of Ninety-Five Senses follows an older gentleman Coy voiced fantastically by Tim Blake Nelson. As the story moves and Coy talks to us about the senses we are treated to what seems to be lovely memories, things like the smell of a swimming pool and eyes feasting on the beauty of paintings or double rainbows but as the story moves something seems off. As Coy describes hearing to us we learn that his hearing isn’t too good partially because his Dads hearing was so bad. Even worse, we learn Coy lost a job at an auto parts shop because of an incident where he couldn't hear, a job he loved. In anger Coy burns down the auto shop which he admits he never denied. What he says next however changes the feel of the short drastically. “But as God as my judge I didn’t know cricket (owner) lived above that shop with his family.” This is when we learn that Coy is no ordinary man; he is a man on his way to be executed for his crime. We learn about the next two senses touch and taste through the lens of a concrete prison and a man eating his last meal. In fact when we leave Coy at the end it seems that it’s time for him to take his final walk.
At face value this story seems so cut and dry this man killed a family and now is paying the ultimate price for taking their lives. This is often the thought process when we access people who commit these kinds of crimes. However it is the way Nelson and this film make you feel dare I say empathy for the man in a way that is so effective and feels so tragic. In no way does the short aim to excuse his actions but it sadly even at one point illustrates what his life could have been had that one mistake not happened. This view into a possible future shows how much one event can change a life forever. The film even dares in some ways to even illustrate how cold, lifeless, and inhumane the life a prisoner can be.
I have watched this short many times since my first viewing and I still am not fully sure what I think of Coy. Sometimes I think he’s not far off from the older people who I interact with every day but also I think he is a killer, someone who has taken the life of an entire family which is admittedly a hard pill to swallow. What I am left with every time I finish this beautifully animated short is the idea that our senses are complex and as a result we are complex. Humans are not one moment, we are hundreds of moments before it that lead to where we are and our senses in many ways inform us and make up those moments. We are the swimming pools and rivers swam in as kids and we are the times when grandparents yelled at us for stealing a magazine. The beauty of this is that maybe Coy was always bound for this life a prisoner on death row and maybe he wasn’t. No one wants to be defined by who they were in their worst moment but Coy in this story was and it’s tragic but also not necessarily wrong to see and accept this result. This is the beauty in Ninety-Five Senses is that you feel conflicted and that's what great film is about, not the simplistic answers to stopping war that are easier said than actually done but the complex nature of human moments and the senses that help us define them. The Oscars are often described as the biggest night in film and they should reward the best films, films like Ninety Five Senses.
Kaleb Unger
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