Well, we’re finally here, my one-hundredth entry on this blog. It’s been a fun ride, looking through the weird and artistic parts of filmmaking with you folks, so I wanted to cover something very special for the occasion: It’s Such a Beautiful Day, a film by one of my old favorites, Mr. Don Hertzfeldt. I have a personal history with Hertzfeldt’s work, and I felt that this film would be a great example of his work to introduce to you all. It’s both a bittersweet story and an experimental filmmaking triumph, as well as a significant moment in his career, so I hope you all will enjoy my review and go seek the film out for yourselves. As is tradition, let’s talk about the story.
The film follows Bill, a man who lives a generally average life, but is also clearly hindered by mental health and degenerative problems. At first, they mostly just come off along the lines of autism or OCD with issues like difficulty connecting with others, caution with potentially infectious things (like always taking fruit from the back of the cart as the ones in the front are at “crotch-level),” and such, but it becomes clear through the visuals and through the implications of his doctor that they’re much more dire. Bill starts having fits of confusion-induced rage and stressful hallucinations, and it’s becoming harder and harder for him to remember things. His physical health also starts fluctuating wildly, causing more than one near-death scare as well. Throughout all this, we learn more about his family history, and how there seems to be a lineage of mental and physical health issues running through their bloodline, as well as about Bill’s perspective on life and existence: how we’re all basically just brains controlling flesh-puppets when you get down to it, and how we often wish we could go back in time and tell our younger selves what we’ve only now realized on our death beds. As his condition worsens, he actually starts to appreciate the smaller things in life much more than he did before, and one day, he takes off in his car, determined to just keep on driving, not knowing where he’s going. He ends up at his old family home, where he unknowingly meets his uncle, who gives him an address that he was hidden from knowing about. I won’t spoil what the address leads to, as I think you should see the rest for yourself. Now that you have an idea of the story, let’s get into my thoughts.
So, as you can probably tell from the subject matter alone, this is a heavy film. We’re basically watching someone’s struggle with an incurable degenerative condition and trying to make something of the time they have left. The filmmaking itself really helps with that, as the presentation is framed (literally and figuratively) in such a way that we’re able to experience Bill’s internal state visually. Hertzfeldt employs many experimental techniques to achieve this, such as blocking out parts of the lens to create what looks like a black void with focal holes cut out, through which we’re able to see the important moments more directly rather than having it all be a part of one big image. Live-action footage is also often interspersed with the animation, and it’s very telling that this footage starts off in black & white and is animated choppily like a flipbook, but as the film goes on, the color starts to come in and the footage gets more and more smooth. There’s even a moment where, through Bill’s eyes, we see the animated people walking on the sidewalk as the image slowly fades in and out from them to the people that they’re rotoscoped over. It gives off the impression that the more simplistic animated world that the film inhabits might just be a part of how Bill experiences the world in general, as if the true beauty and sensory experiences had been muted for him for so long, either due to his condition or due to him just never really noticing them before or both. It’s especially telling that, as the color returns to the live footage, it also starts to become the background itself, with the animated characters superimposed on top of it, as if to say that, yes, this is the real world of the film. Hertzfeldt also employs various lighting techniques to give off other parts of the cinematic experience, such as using real lighting to both represent a physical light source in the story as well as colored lighting or tinting to show how Bill’s feeling (for example, when Bill starts to become overwhelmed and angry by his surroundings, a red glow/tint starts to envelop the frame surrounding the cut-out point). In addition to all of this, Hertzfeldt often blurs the imagery and abstract effects to emphasize the foggy and distorted way that Bill sees everything. The movie as a whole is a remarkable piece of filmmaking, and Hertzfeldt really knew how to employ these experimental qualities to their best effect. It’s even more impressive when you know that all of it was done practically. For those unfamiliar with his work, Hertzfeldt’s animation has, up until recently, been done through drawing on paper. Yes, no use of the cel process, no drawing on a tablet, I mean directly on paper. That’s a technique that goes back to the very, very early days of animation, and is almost never done anymore (along with drawn animation in general, sadly). He even used an old 1940’s animation camera, that’s how dedicated he was. That means that everything on the screen had to be captured through a real camera, so all the lighting effects are real, all the abstract imagery is real, and obviously all the live footage is real too. This is the kind of filmmaking and animation that is not only impressive, but that I personally find a lot of meaning in. I don’t mean to denigrate things like CG, as it can be very impressive, interesting, and impactful in its own right, but I just find a certain value in this sort of filmmaking. It just gives off a different feel and experience. It’s also sadly perfect that, in the later parts of production, apparently the animation camera started dying, which actually caused new lighting elements that weren’t intended. I have to wonder if, given that he’s been doing digital animation since then, this might mean the camera is broken and isn’t usable anymore. If that’s the truth, then this was a beautiful, bittersweet note to go out on, creating this film as its final work. Honestly, watching this film again now that I’m ten or more years older than when I first experienced it, it hits me even more than it did the first time. I remember that back then I was mostly struck by this undefinable, ethereal quality that I saw in it, which I felt with most of his work. That’s not to say a lot of it wasn’t also quirky and comedic, even this film has moments of that, but there was always this other element to it that I’ve never been able to define that drew me in. Now, watching the film again, I do still feel that element there, but the subject matter hits much closer to home too. All of my grandparents have had to go through different forms of mental and/or physical deterioration before they died, and now another close family member is going through it much earlier in their life. It’s very sad to see people go through this, but you also know that whatever you may be feeling about their struggle, they’re the ones dealing with it directly and probably feel much worse than you do. I don’t wish for anyone to have to go through that, even though I know it’s an all-too-common thing. Honestly, I’m scared to face it myself. I don’t have any guarantees that it’ll happen to me, but I do worry about the possibility of it a lot. If this sort of subject matter is too much for any of you to witness, then it might be best not to watch this film, but I do highly recommend it for anyone that does think they’ll be okay watching it. Well, I think that’s most everything I wanted to say about this film, and I’m already well past my deadline now, so I think this is where I’ll have to end things off.
I want to thank you all for continuing to read this blog for the few years I’ve done it, and I sincerely hope that you check this film out. I was wondering if I might be cheating calling this one whole film, since Hertzfeldt technically made it in chunks (he worked on each chapter as individual shorts first, and then edited them together when he was finished), but it’s always presented as a feature film now, and it’s not like I haven’t talked about short films on here before, so I think it works. With my one hundredth entry drawing to a close, I’m going to be taking a break from this blog for a while. I’m not sure how long exactly, and if I decide at some point that I won’t be returning at all, then I’ll definitely make a post about that on here. I just feel like I need to focus on other things for a while, and I actually haven’t been feeling all that great recently, so I think now is a good time to take a break. Thank you all again for sticking with me throughout all of this, and I hope that you continue to delve into the obscure and arty realms of the film world. Have a wonderful day, and I’ll see you all again sometime.