Yes-People.
The Oscars’ glitter-gold light has shone favorably on indie animated shorts this year: several nominees in the category have an experimental bent and no affiliation to big studios. Take
Yes-People, a passion project by Icelandic animator Halldórsson, which sketches the mundane lives of an apartment block’s inhabitants using just one word of dialogue: “já,” which can be (imperfectly) translated as “yes.”
Across a succession of vignettes, a half-dozen characters go through the motions at home, school, and work; the infinite modulations of how they say “já” hint at how they feel inside. In its wry, laconic portrayal of the joys, tensions, and disappointments underlying people’s daily routines,