Pear Cider and Cigarettes

I just saw this in a collection of the Oscar nominated shorts this year. While I thought the live action ones were excellent (all of them), it was the animated segment that had me mixed. Some were decent, but others not so much. This one is so conflicting on me that I just have to say something about it. For an animated short it looks excellent, and seems quite reminiscent of a graphic novel. The style and execution of such here is brilliant. The story is also decent, and so is the choice of music.

On the other hand, the execution of anything other than the visuals and music is iffy. The story is one that I believe would make for a good feature-length film, given the right director and screenwriter... but, being 30 minutes only serves to limit how this story can be told, and it cripples it in my opinion.

The story is completely narrated from the first person, as with the animation style. This wouldn't be so bad if a) it worked with the story being presented and b) the short wasn't half an hour long. Surprise! It doesn't work with the story too well and this is the longest animated short of the bunch. The issue with this decision is that it's not as investing as a story like this SHOULD be. It's one with ups and downs, a realistic setting, and the potential for great characters, but all of that feels wasted the 45th time I heard the name 'Techno' narrated to me, an audience member.

My point is: as far as the Oscar shorts for this year, this one is easily the most risqué (I mean, it did give us a fair warning before it played, and it deserved it more than last year), with probably some of the best 2 dimensional animation I've seen in a while... but, given the fact that it's short, it FALLS short on what more it could do brilliantly. For some this will be moving, for me, it just felt like it moved all over the place, way more than it should, and that's a real shame.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes (2016)

*** (out of 4)

Out of the five Oscar-nominations for Best Animated Short, this one here clocks in the longest and it's certainly the most adult one. Robert narrates the story of his best friend, Techno, who is pretty much that wild child that most people have a friend like. It turns out that Techno's wild partying days have finally caught up with him and he needs a liver transplant, which takes the two friends to China.

This here certainly isn't the best short from the five selections but it's an entertaining one. The film clocks in at 35-minutes, which is pretty much longer than the other four combined but it's got some very good images throughout and I thought the story itself was totally captivating. There's no question that once you started watching the picture that director-writer Robert Valley managed to hold your attention and as the film plays on you really start to wonder and care about the Techno character.

'PEAR CIDER AND CIGARETTES': Three Stars (Out of Five)

A 35-minute Oscar nominated animated short. This one is about a man's desperate attempts to save his troubled friend; by bringing him home to Vancouver, from a Chinese military hospital. The man has also known the friend since childhood, and he's sadly always known that he's been self destructive all of his life. The short was written and directed by Robert Valley; who's also directed such popular animated TV shows as 'AEON FLUX', 'TRON: UPRISING' and the recent 'WONDER WOMAN'. This is my least favorite of the 2017 Oscar nominated animated shorts (and I even liked it less than the 'Highly Commendable' animated shorts that were played with it in theaters). I like how dark it is, and it's very reminiscent of the director's other work, but it's also really depressing and boring. At 35- minutes it just goes on for way too long; the other Oscar nominated animated shorts were able to accomplish so much more, in a much shorter amount of time!

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Watching this feels like listening to a good friend unhurriedly tell you a deeply personal story about someone they care about. This feels rather unique to animation or even film because potential thematic elements aren't given any more weight than is necessary to describe the situations and characters- in other words "themes" are more the background and less the gravitational mass around which the story revolves.

This is where "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" excels in capturing the feeling of listening to your friend recount something, which usually doesn't involve an intentional theme nor carefully crafted character arcs, etc. Rather, the story is told weaving in and out of chronological order seemingly as the narrator remembers it without pretense.

The frame economy is reminiscent of many Japanese animations that understand how to make one drawing do more that one hundred, while the animation style itself, editing, and cinematography are all something very unique to Robert Valley and absolutely superb.

Combining the animation which is, generally speaking, a very slow and methodically produced medium with the aforementioned storytelling gives the film a very spontaneous feeling- a casualness of narrative contrasted with an elite professionalism of visuals.

Regarding what some call "flaws," I don't see them as such but rather the "character" or "texture" of the film, which fortunately hasn't been polished or edited away and thus feels very personal. Being able to really hear the artist's voice is one of the most powerful experiences a viewer can have, but that means, just like a conversation with a good friend, you can't demand their simultaneous efficiency and fastidious awareness of what they should omit for their audience to the detriment of how they naturally express themselves.

It's an unusual addiction story in that very few addicts will have the resources that are available to the main character of this animated short. But we've heard the same addiction stories a million times, so it's an interesting and haunting voyage into territory most of us won't experience. I agree with other reviewers about its flaws but it is still very well done and very much worth watching unless you need absolute perfection in your audio/visual entertainment.