Avant-Garde: Night Music (1986, Stan Brakhage)

Night Music (1986)
USA, 30 sec

Directed by: Stan Brakhage

One can't critique a Stan Brakhage work the way one does an ordinary film. I'm not entirely convinced that the director had anything specific in mind when he created Night Music (1986), but, whatever he was going for, it was something subliminal. Though running for a mere thirty seconds (making this, I believe, the shortest film I've ever seen), the eye is greeted with dozens, perhaps even hundreds, of individual hand-painted images, each shimmering from the frame like searing patches of napalm. What Brakhage is showing us is unclear, but probably irrelevant – more important is what we actually see. Me? I saw the vastness of outer space, glittering with blazing nebulae of dust and flame. I saw a frantic oceanic battle, with ships floundering in the waves. I saw a village disappear in an explosion of fire. Then I watched Night Music again, and again, and saw something different every time. The human brain is a brilliant if peculiar interpretor of visual information, and Brakhage taps into the mind's inherent subjectivity. With this goal in mind, he produced a series of silent hand-painted short films, the most impressive of which is The Dante Quartet (1987), a six-minute adaptation of Dante's "The Divine Comedy."

6/10

Soviet: Time Out (1984, Priit Pärn)

Time Out (1984)

Soviet Union (Estonia), 9 min

Directed by: Priit Pärn

Written by: Priit Pärn

Priit Pärn's Time Out (1984) is as nonsensical as a Terry Gilliam cartoon, but with even more randomness to spare. The story, such as it is, concerns an overworked cat who wakes up and is immediately engaged in a flurry of stressful morning activities, eventually working himself into a nervous breakdown. At this point, the cat enters an imaginary inner world that temporarily removes him from the chaos of his daily routine, similar to the reveries of Jonathan Pryce's character in Gilliam's Brazil (1985). At this point, any semblance of narrative is thrown out the window. What I found most interesting amid all this craziness was how Pärn accentuated the surrealism of the cat's fantasies by toying with visual perception, a bit like M.C. Escher's tessellations – an apparent river is revealed to be a dwarf's blue hat; a bird rotates its beak to become a wizard's hat; a crow tries to take off, only to find that its tail is a turn-off in the road.

Eventually, the cat reawakens from his daydream and falls back into the chaotic routine to which he's become accustomed. His "escape" into fantasy, oddly enough, was no less hectic than his usual schedule, though he does admittedly have a greater control over the elements of his environment. Priit Pärn's visual style is a departure from the traditional Soviet animation of earlier decades, decidedly less graceful and with a slap-dash quality that suggests the animator was basically making it up as he went {visually, one might venture that the film is closest to the "Nu, pogodi!" series (1969-1993)}. There's even an appearance from a giant stamping foot, probably indicating that Pärn was, indeed, influenced by Gilliam's work on "Monty Python's Flying Circus." I usually enjoy Soviet animation for its gorgeous visuals, so I'm not sure that Time Out was necessarily my sort of film – but, even so, that was a wild ten minutes. I'm sure I'll be revisiting Pärn's other work at some later date.

6/10

Soviet: Conflict (1983, Garri Bardin)

Konflikt / Conflict (1983)
Soviet Union, 7 min
Directed by: Garri Bardin

Written by: Garri Bardin

Having seen all sorts of anti-Cold War films from the United States, it was refreshing to watch a film from the other side in the conflict. At the very least, it's reassuring to know that both sides were equally terrified at the prospect of nuclear war. Garri Bardin's Conflict (1983) is similar in principle to Norman McLaren's Neighbours (1952). However, instead of animating real-life people for an anti-war protest, Bardin uses matchsticks – an appropriate metaphor given that even the slightest spark of conflict could very well have ended in the destruction of our entire race {take the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, for example}. In the film, two groups of matches are separated by an arbitrary boundary line – obviously representing the Berlin Wall – which is guarded vigilantly by armed soldiers on either side. When, by no fault of anyone, the boundary shifts slightly, a minor territory dispute escalates into a globe-shattering altercation.

Conflict has a simple point to make, and it makes it well. The matchsticks from both territories initially emerge from the same matchbox, suggesting that they're merely fighting with themselves over arbitrary distinctions. McLaren's Neighbours had a peculiar quirkiness that, I thought, was counter-productive to the serious message that was trying to be made, but here Bardin makes it work with something similar. But the little visual gags – the cavalry, weapons and vehicles, all made from matchsticks – give way to horror in the final minutes, when the conflict climaxes in a nuclear strike, which leaves armies of matchsticks flailing in the flames. The final shots are not unlike the post-apocalyptic sequences in the Terminator films. Charred matchsticks stand lonely against a barren backdrop, an environment utterly devoid of life. For a long time, that's where we were headed. The Berlin Wall came down in 1989.

7/10

Horror: Vincent (1982, Tim Burton)

Vincent (1982)
USA, 6 min
Directed by: Tim Burton
Written by: Tim Burton
Starring: Vincent Price (voice)

Vincent (1982) isn't the sort of film that you'd expect to come out of Walt Disney Productions, but it's exactly what you'd expect from Tim Burton. The director's first success, this six-minute animated short is both an affectionate tribute to the acting career of Vincent Price, and a vehicle for Burton's perverse sense of black humour. Vincent Malloy is a seven-year-old boy with an unhealthy obsession with the actor who shares his name, such that he actively wishes to become Vincent Price – or, more accurately, the range of characters that Price so memorably brought to the silver screen. Via increasingly-ghoulish flights of imagination, young Vincent envisages mutating his dog into a zombie henchman, dipping his auntie into hot wax, and attempting to dig up the totting corpse of his dead wife. Unfortunately, I'm not familiar enough with Price's body of work to spot all the references, but I'm fairly certain that among the movies Burton had in mind were House of Wax (1953), House of Usher (1960), The Last Man on Earth (1964) and, of course, The Raven (1963).

The film is animated in a style reminiscent of 1920s German Expressionism, with the continually-shifting walls and furniture serving to convey Vincent's escalating madness. A definite stylistic inspiration would also have been Ted Parmelee's The Tell-Tale Heart (1953), an excellent animated short film (based on Edgar Allen Poe's short story) that utilised Expressionism to emphasise the insanity of its narrator, voiced by James Mason. But Tim Burton goes one better than James Mason, employing the services of Vincent Price himself, who considered the film one of the most memorable tributes he'd ever received. Price narrates the story as a poem, in a manner than suggests the work of Dr. Seuss, but was probably aiming more to emulate Poe's "The Raven," the final lines of which is used to close the story. Like Poe's protagonists in both "The Raven" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," young Vincent is left at the whim of his insanity, offered little opportunity for redemption or resolution. If you can handle Burton's macabre sense of humour, then this is a gem.
7/10

Animation: The Man Who Planted Trees (1987, Frédéric Back)

The Man Who Planted Trees (1987)

Canada, 30 min

Directed by: Frédéric Back

Written by: Jean Giono (story), Jean Roberts (translator)

Starring: Philippe Noiret (voice) (French-language version) ; Christopher Plummer (voice) (English-language version)

Frédéric Back's The Man Who Planted Trees (1987) is the one short film that has been fervently recommended to me above all others, and I'm surprised that it took me so very long to get around to it {fortunately, my stubbornness proved beneficial, since I was able to hold out for a high-quality copy}. My only previous experience with Back was his first Oscar-nominated effort All Nothing (1980) in May 2007, and I enjoyed its artistry, even if the basis in Creationism kept me distanced from its central themes. This effort, arguably Back's most celebrated, tells the story of Elezeard Bouffier, an old shepherd who singlehandedly created a forest through decades of planting seeds. Though I initially assumed that Bouffier was a real-life figure, he was, in fact, a fictional creation of author Jean Giono, who apparently perpetuated the misconception. Either way, this shepherd's story is powerful and inspirational, Back's animation giving life to Giono's uplifting tale.

When I recall Frédéric Back's work, the first contemporary animator who comes to mind is Aleksandr Petrov, whose paint-on-glass animation allows similar dream-like visuals that morph from one image to another like a shifting desert landscape. The Man Who Planted Trees doesn't resemble a moving oil painting, as does Petrov's work, but instead bears a slightly more minimalistic pastel-sketching style. Even so, the attention-to-detail is simply staggering. For the film's opening half, the colour palette is largely sepia-toned, emphasising the sheer barrenness of the desert, with bare rocks and coarse weeds lashed by a dry, bitter wind. As Bouffier plants his trees, Back gradually introduces colour into his work, symbolising the physical and spiritual rebirth of the region. My single slight criticism with the film is that the narration should probably have been used more sparingly. As warm as I found Christopher Plummer's voice, I think that some scenes would have proved more powerful had the viewer been left to his own accord, to absorb for himself the breathtaking beauty of Back's animation.

The Man Who Planted Trees serves, I think, as a fine counterpoint to Back's previous short film, All Nothing. In the latter, a dissatisfied Mankind rapes and pillages the life that his Creator has placed upon the planet. In this film, Mankind gives back to nature; rather than destroying life, Bouffier creates it himself, even as two World Wars rage overhead. On at least two occasions, the narrator {Christopher Plummer in the English-language version, Philippe Noiret in the French} remarks that what Bouffier accomplished makes him something akin to God. Indeed, the government officials who arrive to observe his forest can think of no other explanation for the miraculous rebirth, declaring it an astonishing natural phenomenon. Nobody can believe that all this joy could have been created by the hand of a single man. I interpreted this as a touchingly humanist statement. After all, if an old shepherd like Elezeard Bouffier can give rise to such life, why, indeed, do we need a God at all?
9/10

Claymation: Creature Comforts (1989, Nick Park)

Creature Comforts (1989)
UK, 5 min
Directed by: Nick Park
Written by: Nick Park (uncredited)
Starring: Julie Sedgewick (voice)

Nick Park's Creature Comforts (1989) beat out competition from the likes of Bruno Bozzetto and Nick Park to win the 1991 Oscar for Best Animated Short. In all honesty, I haven't seen nominee Cavallette (1990), but I still think that the Academy got their ballots mixed up. Just for the record, I find A Grand Day Out with Wallace and Gromit (1989) to be the much better short film, with an entertaining, fully-structured narrative and no shortage of imagination. Creature Comforts has a nice premise and some good jokes, but it's all over so very quickly, leaving only a shallow impression that doesn't bode well for repeat viewings. Nevertheless, the animal characters have that wonderful home-grown "Wallace and Gromit" look about them, always a lovely trademark of Aardman Animations, as well as charming British accents that add some sophistication to the zoo inhabitants' gripes. I’ve always wondered why the British have inherently sophisticated accents.

This five-minute short film is basically just a series of very brief vignettes in which zoo animals are interviewed for their opinions on life in captivity. Some animals have some good things to say about it, but most do nothing but complain, particularly a certain South American carnivore who goes on at length about the "lack of space" in his enclosure. There's a family of polar bears who are eager to get their opinions across, and miss having steak in their diets. I also liked the turtle that "tries to spend as little time in here as possible," although that is more easily said than done. The quaintness of the dialogue is probably due to the filming technique, which was to interview zoo visitors off the street, request that they behave like animals, and produce the animation around these results. In 2003, Creature Comforts was expanded into a successful TV series, though the even greater success of the Wallace and Gromit franchise validates, I think, my feelings about which is the better film.
6/10

Soviet: The Marathon (1988, Aleksandr Petrov, Michael Tumelya)

The Marathon (1988)
Soviet Union, 2 min
Directed by: Aleksandr Petrov, Mikhail Tumelya

After several years working as art director on such films as Alexei Karaev’s Welcome (1986), Aleksandr Petrov’s first film as director was The Marathon (1988), which he co-directed with Michael Tumelya. This brief tribute to Walt Disney’s immortal creation Mickey Mouse possesses none of the breathtaking visuals for which Petrov would later become known, but it is nonetheless a powerful piece of work, even at just two minutes in length. The film was produced to celebrate the character’s 60th anniversary, and that Roy E. Disney and a group of American animators paid a visit to the USSR in 1988 probably gave some added incentive. By all reports, Disney was thrilled with the effort. While it was Korova (1989) – Petrov’s diploma work – that really established Petrov as an imminent animation genius (he received the first of his Oscar nominations), this earlier student short, by its potent simplicity, is well worth tracking down for all fans of the director.

The film opens in 1928, with a young child looking at a reflection of himself in the mirror, which is actually a cinema screen. Along comes the guiding hand of Walt Disney, who transforms the child’s reflected image into none other than Mickey Mouse. Having found an immortal friend in this big-eared critter, the child and Mickey begin dancing joyously opposite each other. As the film progresses, the baby becomes a boy, the boy becomes a young man, the young man becomes an adult, and the adult has finally become an old man. Mickey Mouse, unchanged and still bringing joy to this old man’s heart, continues with his enthusiastic dancing. By the end of the film, the man is frail and near death, but a grandchild wringing at his arm becomes equally enthralled by the image of Mickey cavorting across the television screen. Walt Disney may be dead, and Mickey’s original fans may be getting on in years, but this big-eared rodent will always be around to bring delight to the hearts of millions.
7/10