'World of Tomorrow,' docs in Oscar spotlight

One of the best movies of last year only takes 17 minutes of your time.

“World of Tomorrow,” a Sundance breakout last year and a frontrunner to win the Best Animated Short Oscar next month, is now available for viewing on Netflix Instant streaming.

Don’t mistake its brevity for a lack of complexity. Written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt, “World of Tomorrow” begins with a crudely-animated little girl, Emily, pressing random buttons on a communication console. She then receives a message from a third-generation adult clone of herself from more than 200 years in the future.

Clone Emily tells the little girl all about the world she will eventually experience, and little Emily, of course, doesn’t have much to say about it except the typical little kid ramblings. Her reactions are funny, and the humor helps to digest a rather dense overview of the technological and cultural changes Emily (and her clones) will encounter.

It would be improper to spoil much more content about such a short film, but “World of Tomorrow” ultimately builds into something both heartbreaking and hopeful. Hertzfeldt crafts a piece of science-fiction that leaves you wanting to explore its universe more, even as the story itself feels complete.

Watching it won’t set you back even a half an hour, and chances are you’ll be thinking about it much longer.

Oscar-nominated docs

Also available on Netflix Instant streaming, the Oscar-nominated “Cartel Land” provides a staggering behind-the-scenes look at Mexico’s drug cartels and a group of citizens trying to stop the residual violence in their hometowns.

Last year’s chilling (and fictional) cartel thriller “Sicario” extrapolated on some of the shocking violence happening just south of our border. “Cartel Land” is the real thing, and director Matthew Heineman embeds himself with a homegrown militia as it engages in combat with the cartel.

The movie also follows an American militia on this side of the border and its efforts to stop cartel violence from seeping into the States. The film invites easy comparison between the U.S. and Mexican militias, although it’s pretty obvious from the footage where the actual threat of violence currently exists.

The material set in Mexico is horrifying, and with success the Mexican militia faces its own issues of morality. Even in a place where the police system is corrupt, to what extent is such vigilantism justified?

The U.S. content works less, in part because the militia isn’t facing particularly dire circumstances. Its version of vigilantism invites a more divisive, political discussion, and maybe the movie would have been better off focusing just on what’s happening on the Mexican side. Still, “Cartel Land” exposes the darkest facets of a decades-long “War on Drugs” that won’t be going away anytime soon.

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“The Look of Silence,” another Oscar nominee for Documentary Feature, explores violence and genocide from the perspectives of both the survivors and the murderers. Director Joshua Oppenheimer continues the work he started in the Oscar nominated “The Act of Killing,” a movie about the Indonesian mass-killings of the the 1960s, told from the perspective of the death squad leaders.

In allowing the killers to boast openly about their crimes on camera, “The Act of Killing” served as a bewildering study of how heinous acts are committed seemingly without any sense of moral culpability.

Whereas some could only see “The Act of Killing” as an outlet for murderers to celebrate their unpunished crimes (the movie doesn’t do that, in my opinion), “The Look of Silence” looks at the the same atrocities from the perspective of a single victim and his family. The film follows Adi, the brother of a man murdered during the genocide, as he meets with the men responsible for the purge. Under the guise of providing eye exams, Adi presses the men into answering questions about their actions, and if any of them feel any regret or guilt.

Adi’s quest for answers is a dangerous one, as the militia responsible for the genocide is still in power. There are veiled threats made to Adi, and the men repeatedly try to avoid talking about what they consider past “politics.”

As much as they want to casually talk about things like drinking their victims’ blood, nobody is willing to take the responsibility of killing Adi’s brother. Adi wants to understand the why — why anyone could slice apart another human based solely on propaganda and half-truths. “The Look of Silence” finds no easy answer.

It’s clear now just how “The Act of Killing” and “The Look of Silence” serve as two halves of a singular, essential story. It finishes where it needs to — in the hands of victims and their families in search of something that was forever taken from them. The takeaway is to know the history, to know how it happened without consequence, and to be aware of how easily it could happen again.

“The Look of Silence” is available to rent on disc and from digital outlets.

Tyler Wilson can be reached at twilson@cdapress.com