By Patrick Koduah / @PatrickKoduah
It will make you really give a damn about the life of a  stickman.
                  
“It was so sad”, a young woman whispers as a single tear flows down her cheek. She shuffles in slow motion, pensive amidst the audience filtering out through the cinema doors. Only moments earlier belly clutching, eye wrinkling laughter ripples through the same darkened theatre. Why tears? Why unbridled joy? A theatre full of explorers had just returned from an expedition into an emotional enigma, the mind of Don Hertzfeldt.
“Dark comedy is the most intelligent form of comedy… it makes you think about why you’re laughing.” – Don Hertzfeldt
Don is a rarity amongst filmmakers. He steadfastly eschews commercial work, instead devoting years at a time to conjure mere minutes of his movies, hermetically sealed away, hand drawing his own stories frame by frame, using traditional methods much like the classic animators of an era fading far away. Hailing from Fremont, California, his body of work consists of a series of acclaimed and beloved independent short films that have garnered an enthusiastic following that has continued to grow since his late 90’s debut.
His later work often veers towards the spiritual; life, existence, the thoughts in our head. Even with the enormity of such themes, he’ll manage to slip in a joke about a giant, talking, bug-eyed banana. You never know quite what to expect.
The  screening of ‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day’, currently showing at the ICA in London, starts with a choice selection of Hertzfeldt’s early short films, namely ‘Rejected’ and ‘The Meaning of Life’, before the main feature .
‘Rejected‘
Here, we see a series of imagined commercials for the ‘Family Learning Channel’, a composite of the vanilla antiseptic, falsely innocent aspect of the media . The ads veer into territory that is the anathema of family friendly, subverting the cutesy into crazy.
‘The Meaning of Life‘
This film evokes a kind of slack jawed awe, reminiscent of a classic David Attenborough documentary. There is a widely encompassing, sweeping look at human life and mortality, that stretches beyond to imagined creatures of the universe. All of this is interspliced with a recurring shimmering stream of stars that revolves, rolls and twinkles to make one ponder. We are privy to an alien son seemingly asking his father about the meaning of life. Their language is mostly unintelligible, but the emotions translate perfectly.
“Animation is supposed to be free from reality” – Don Hertzfeldt
‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day‘
The main feature, ‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day’ consists of three parts woven into one epic; ‘Everything Will Be OK’, ‘I Am So Proud of You’ and ‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day’, from which the final feature takes its name.
Hertzfeldt narrates a patchwork of minor thoughts and observations that gradually thread together to reveal the life and times of Bill, a sympathetic, troubled, oft mysterious stick man… with a hat. Hertzfeldt’s voice has a mesmeric timbre that in concert with his cosmic themes conjures the scientific spirituality of Carl Sagan. The visual style is unique. Each thought is represented by a bright animated clearing in the darkness. Several thoughts appear or disappear simultaneously, or in succession creating a sense of holding several thoughts at one time, a stream of consciousness, a sense of being in Bill’s mind. Being in Bill’s mind is a fascinating experience. We navigates Bill’s troubling familial relationships, his remembered or misremembered past, his daydreams and his night dreams. Soon time itself seems to break free from all rules. Life lived on a loop. Life lived for eternity. What would that be like?
The classical music score is apt. The primordial reverberations of Wagner’s ‘Das Rheingold’ usher the scenes perfectly, culminating in a spiritual crescendo. The animation is flat, fluid and simple; dot eyes, round faces, and stick limbs. The direction is sophisticated, switching from the slow motion parsing of a momentary passing by, atmospheric glimpses of grayscale live action, to the dramatic use of groundhog day repetition. The progression of the narrative is complex, deep and ultimately explosive like riding an atom through the barrel vault of the Hadron Collider. It is a sign of a great film if it can live on, as a lodger in your mind, moving your internal mental furniture, drawing the curtains, casting a new light; forcing you to re-evaluate, to ponder, to imagine.
‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day’ lives on in me, and it can live on in you too.
‘It’s Such a Beautiful Day’ is currently screening at the ICA, London until 26th May 2013.
For more information on Don Hertzfeldt, you can go to www.bitterfilms.com
