This is probably our first non-feature-length film that we’ve covered on this blog, not counting the Norstein shorts, but just because it’s not the standard hour or two hours doesn’t mean it’s any lesser than a standard film. In fact, it probably contains more beautiful and interesting art/animation than most feature films, all brought to you by some of the world’s best animation artists and craftspeople. I had heard about this project previously, but just now got around to viewing it, and I’m very glad that I did. It really is a wonderful showcase of the breadth of the animation world and many of the techniques that it contains. I’m going to skip over the story section we usually do, as that’s not really what this film is about. I’ll explain as we go, so let’s dive in.
So, essentially what we have here is an artistic rendering of a poem, with each animator taking on one of the stanzas (or whatever the term would be in Japanese poetry). It’s a rather fitting choice, as the poem they’re adapting was also a collaboration, one between various Japanese poets. This project was put together by Kihachiro Kawamoto, a Japanese stop-motion animator that has a very unique style, and someone that I’ve considered featuring on this blog at some point. He, of course, contributes his signature armature style in the second and final sections of the film, which has a quality that I’d describe as traditional Japanese dolls meet Noh theater on a Japanese-style drawn and painted background. As you can see, he clearly takes much inspiration from his own culture, and he performs it with an elegance of movement that is rather unique in the stop-motion sphere. However, he’s not the only one to bring their armature A-game. Bretislav Pojar from the Czech Republic uses his own signature doll-esque style to great effect too, creating a beautiful and heartfelt scene of a lady and her helpers fleeing their castle home, seemingly in the midst of a battle. Co Hoedemann from the Netherlands crafts some very interesting figurines, which almost look like a combination of shadow puppets and coiled metal art. Even other Japanese animators, Yuko Asano and Maasaki Mori, throw their hands into the puppet animation ring, with Asano providing some interestingly rougher takes on the traditional Japanese doll look mixed with drawn/painted morphing backgrounds, and Mori creating a fun little segment featuring cartoony pigs that almost have a Will Vinton-esque quality to them (though not quite to the degrees that Vinton would normally go). It really gives you a sense of how many different ways one type of animation can be presented, which is shown even more so in the many drawn segments. These sections can go from looking like boldly colored and thick-outlined magazine art from Tatsutoshi Nomura to a variant of earlier styles of “anime” with Shinichi Suzuki, to a the very childlike yet deep style of Tatsuya Ishida, to the rich pencil drawing and shading look provided by Raoul Servais. Lest I forget the various other styles they managed to work in here, such as Aleksandr Petrov’s lovely and remarkably smooth paint-on-glass technique, Fumio Oi’s fascinating CG segment that almost looks like something out of an older artistic PC game, Tatsuo Shimamura’s striking segment of a rotoscoped woman on a CG background, and even Fusako Yusaki’s charming Claymation segment. But, of course, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Jacques Drouin’s gorgeous pinscreen animation. For those that don’t know, pinscreen is a type of animation that involves a vertical board with a series of pins poking through it. Depending on how far in or out the pins are pushed, it alters the way the light casts shadows on the pins, which if manipulated certain ways can create lovely images and motions. It’s probably one of the most labor intensive and meticulous types of animation, requiring constant push-and-pull of the pins to alter the images, and only a few pinscreens even exist in the world at all. Needless to say, it’s a beautiful segment, and Drouin even seems to make use of actually tilting the pinscreen at certain points, which creates an interesting “real-world perspective shifting” effect. Now, while the majority of the film is very lush and beautiful, there are a few segments that lean more on the comical side, most notably the ones by Yoji Kuri and Uruma Delvi. The former of these is intentionally simplistically drawn with goofy sound effects while the latter has very rounded character designs and over-the-top cartoonish expressions. These might seem jarring, coming off the heels of a string of very lovely and enriching pieces, and I’ll admit that they did throw me for a bit of a loop when I got to them. However, I think this is just another aspect of animation that’s being represented. Not every piece of animation in the world needs to be serious or contemplative, they can be silly or funny if they want to be sometimes (as can any sort of creative media). However, I do acknowledge that, with all these variances in style, both visually and conceptually, not everyone might enjoy every section of this film. Some folks prefer more dramatic works, some prefer comedy, and others like more open tapestries that they can feel emotions and glean ideas from that are relative to them. Ultimately, though, I think that that’s what makes the creative worlds so wonderful, and especially the film/animation world. You have so much to see and so many ways that things can be presented to you, and even if you don’t like everything you come across, you might still be able to take certain things from them and/or they might help you get an understanding of what you like and don’t like. That’s why I think that this film is very worthwhile to seek out, even if you might not enjoy every single segment. It not only shows you the vast range that animation can offer, but it also crafts a unique cinematic experience, brought to you by masters of the art-form from around the world. It doesn’t exactly tell you a linear story, though there are definitely aspects that can link between certain segments (such as in the Ishida section, a child’s mother becomes a heron, and in the following Servais segment, a heron flies and morphs into a black-haired woman before a depressed man). It’s more so just painting a picture of a certain area or time or feeling, as many poems do. If you come into it with the mindset to appreciate this sort of poetry and film-making, I think you’ll greatly enjoy it.
So, yeah, as you can tell, I enjoyed this film quite a lot. I love how each of the animators got to contribute their own style to the proceedings, and how they were able to bring their A-games in the process. I was glad to see that many of the Japanese animators didn’t fall back on the standard “anime style” that their industry is known for. I suppose it makes sense, since independent animation is worldwide and doesn’t have to conform to the standards of the mainstream, but given how ubiquitous that style is with the Japanese animation world, it’s just nice to see that it doesn’t need to define every project. Sadly, this film was never properly released in America, so you might have to get a bit…*ahem*… “underhanded” in order to seek this out, but it’s well worth it, I think. Enjoy the Winter Days, my friends, they’re a beautiful experience and one that you won’t soon forget.