REVIEW // FILM // It's Such a Beautiful Day

2012

Directed by - Don Hertzfeldt

Starring - Don Hertzfeldt 

Have you ever had your heart broken by a stick figure? If not, It’s Such a Beautiful Day will change that. From the mind of Don Hertzfeldt (whose newest film, World of Tomorrow, just took home the Short Film Grand Jury Prize at Sundance), Beautiful Day is actually comprised of three shorts made over five years, following a hapless stickman named Bill.

Part one, Everything Will Be OK (2006), introduces Bill as a man trapped in a monotonous, worried existence, ruled by routine and experiencing the onset of debilitating mental illness. Part two, I Am So Proud of You (2008), looks at his family’s history of psychological disorder, posing quietly ominous questions of fate and coincidence. The final short – It’s Such a Beautiful Day (2011) – gives the feature length film its title, and in doing so appropriately sums up its overall sentiment; while this is a frequently disturbing, profoundly saddening examination of loss and human frailty, there is nevertheless a focus throughout on the inherent beauty and strange joy of life, even when things are bleak.

Hertzfeldt uses a mixture of stick-man animation and occasional photography which looks deceptively simple. However, carefully composed shots within multiple frames, jolting editing and bursts of brain-melting colour all combine to make something which is technically more complex than it may first appear. Music is used to powerful effect, with the classical soundtrack playing constantly, creating an almost subconscious effect of eerie, melancholy beauty throughout. There is a scene of Bill taking a bus ride on a rainy day, looking out of the window, and the music seems to swell into a hypnotic loop. It’s a moment of clarity and mundane euphoria as Bill becomes blissfully lost in his thoughts, and it’s almost inexplicably moving.

There is some surreal existentialist comedy sitting alongside the heart-wrenching moments of ambivalence, confusion, discomfort and pain. Bill’s hallucinations of giant fish heads and swollen genitals are given a frightening intensity which appropriately communicates the chaos of paranoid schizophrenia, and yet Hertzfeldt’s narration – omnisciently commenting on events and vocalising Bill’s thoughts and feelings – maintains a deadpan, vaguely bemused tone throughout. One sequence, involving a hopeless attempt at vacuuming up a leaf, even edges towards broad slapstick in its drawn out absurdity.

It’s as though It’s Such a Beautiful Day occupies the space between ecstasy and depression, always balancing the light against the dark in a story which is at once uplifting and devastating. Even for those with no history or experience of mental disorder, it touches universal nerves about wasted time; joyless routine; memory; love; death and the value of life.

ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED AT SHU OUT OF THE VOID (https://shuoutofthevoid.wordpress.com/2015/02/01/its-such-a-beautiful-day/)