Winning
an Oscar cuts little ice here at Outsider, something
I have already whittered on about at some length in
a post-Oscar ceremony article on the subject. But most
of films nominated in the short film categories are
generally worth a look, in the main because there is
no multi-million dollar market for these works and their
existence at all is often the result of grants, awards,
arts funding or diligent saving. Animated shorts in
particular are usually hugely time consuming and sometimes
expensive (a single film can take a year to make, and
those making it still have to eat after all, even if
they are borrowing all of the equipment and have begged
the film stock), and once the film is complete there
is rarely a guaranteed commercial outlet for it, giving
the animators and their investors scant chance of recouping
the budget. As a result, the animated short remains
one of the purest examples of film as art, created through
a combination of vision and dedication and often a true
auteurist work, with the director also serving as writer
and chief (or even sole) animator. With many not even
employing voice artists, there is no 'interpretation'
of the director's original intentions, and with the
emphasis on artistic expression rather than feeding
audience expectations, the animated short is often the
most experimental film form that you will see up for
major awards of any kind.
That's
not to say that the Academy still doesn't like to play
it safe. As with features, big stories – biographical
works, those spanning a lifetime or even an era – are
favoured over the avante garde, which is still seen
by the establishment as a little too scary for widespread
acceptance. Thus while Nick Park's hugely entertaining,
technically excellent but very audience friendly films
have landed him three Oscars, some of the most visionary
animators of all time – Jan Svankmajer and the Quay
Brothers are two that spring immediately to mind – have
never even been nominated. (Every now and then, though,
something jaw-droppingly experimental slips through,
as with Zbigniew Rybczynski's 1983 win for the brilliant Tango.)
Last
year, unassuming 32-year-old Australian animator Adam
Elliot landed the big prize with a film that manages
to conform to Oscar win expectations and at the same
time kick against them. As with several past winners
and nominees (including this year's winner Ryan)
the film looks at a man's life, but the very specific
charm of Harvie Krumpet is that that
the subject of the film, the Harvie Krumpet of the title,
never achieves anything of note and lives a life largely
comprised of disappointments and misfortunes, laced
with the odd moment of revelation and short periods
of happiness. Effectively Elliot makes a big story out
of a small one – Harvie makes no real impact on society
as a whole (save for a couple of disparaging headlines)
and indeed on very few people individually. A bit like
most of us, then.
The
use of narrational voice-over to tell the story is something
I usually do not warm to, and initially this, coupled
with the resolutely unspectacular nature of the tale,
proved a little distancing, but it is this very matter-of-factness
coupled with Geoffrey Rush's wonderfully deadpan delivery
that provides much of the film's humour, and cumulatively
makes Harvie such an engaging and oddly memorable creation.
Voice-over is key to Elliot's storytelling style, and
in the extras he states that "Animation is not
the most important thing – the narration drives the
film." Though he was actually referring to one
of his earlier works, this is as good a summary of his
approach to storytelling as any – though distinctively
and imaginatively designed and nicely executed, the
animation is never flashy or even particularly attention
grabbing, serving the story without ever drawing attention
to itself. It is inevitable that, as a claymation animator,
Elliot's work would be compared to that of Nick Park,
but the comparison is justified in more than just their
chosen medium – Park is also a storyteller first, and
his animation style, though slick, is used to focus
the audience on the characters. On successive viewings
the film began to remind me of Jane Campion and Gerard
Lee's 1983 live action short Passionless Moments,
which in similarly deadpan style featured a number of
seemingly incidental but quirky observations that only
achieved their full impact when viewed collectively.
Given
the surface simplicity and the small-scale nature of
the story, Harvey Krumpet is actually
a rather surprising Oscar winner, but a pleasing one
– with Elliot still early in his career as an animator,
the award, rather that rewarding the already successful,
is helping to promote a new and distinctive talent and
a film that would otherwise be confined to the festival
circuit. What effect this will have on Elliot's future
career is anybody's guess, but it's worth remembering
what happened to a certain young English animator in
the years that followed his 1991 win for Creature
Comforts.
I've
watched the film four times now and have become increasingly
seduced by the small detail that is so crucial to Elliot's
approach to his character – the 'pop' noise that occasionally
escapes Harvie's mouth, the oddball 'fakts' (a mixture
of truth and fancy) that appear on screen every now
and then, the almost offhand way key events in Harvie's
life (the death of his parents is a good example) are
presented – but also by the sense of melancholy in the
final act, a genuine sadness not just for Harvie, but
for all of the Pleasant Paddocks nursing home residents,
isolated from the real world, sitting at a fake bus
stop and waiting for a bus that will never come. But
the thing that even after the first viewing I just could
not get out of my head was that ridiculously catchy
song delivered by the religious visitors to the home,
something obviously recognised by those assembling the
DVD as it also plays over the main menu. "God is
better than football, God is better than beer...."
Framed
at 1.85:1, this is a nice enough transfer in many respects,
with a sharp picture, solid colours and decent contrast.
There is a little grain visible, but only just, and
it is never distracting. Points are lost, however, because
the transfer is not anamorphically enhanced, despite
claims on the box artwork that it is. This is particularly
frustrating given that the menus and one of the extra
features ARE anamorphic. Whether this is specific to
the review copy is uncertain, but it is disappointing,
as zooming the picture up to fill a 16:9 screen inevitably
degrades it.
There
are two soundtracks available: Dolby 2.0 stereo and,
according to the Setup menu, Dolby 5.1 stereo. As it
turns out there is some rear speaker activity, but it
is very low key and the sound mix tends to be concentrated
at the front, but separation here is very good, and
the 5.1 track is definitely a crisper, more pleasing
mix than the Dolby 2.0 one. Very occasionally – when
Harvie gets hit by lightning, for instance – the subwoofer
pops into life.
The
extras here are not numerous, but nicely selected. There
are actually more extras on the disk than listed on the
menus or the packaging, but I'll get to that in a minute.
An
excellent inclusion here is the director's
commentary. Animator Adam Elliot provides
us a wide range of information on the technical aspects
of creating the film in the manner an old friend sharing
interesting anecdotes over a drink. Given the do-it-yourself
nature of the production there are plenty of fascinating
tales to tell, my favourites being when the set that was taken
over by ants (they had used icing sugar for snow) and
Elliot's concern over full frontal Plasticine nudity.
Adam
Elliot films
very usefully includes not only Elliot's award winning
trilogy of shorts Uncle (6:07 – 1996),
Cousin (4:29 – 1998) and Brother
(7:50 – 1999), but one of his very first stabs at animation,
Human Behavioural Case Studies, Part One
(1:11), made when he was a student at the Victoria College
of Arts in the University of Melbourne in 1996 (where
he also made Uncle). This very handy
collection enables us to trace Elliot's style from his
beginnings right up to Harvie Krumpet,
and the process of development is very clear, in the design,
the animation, narrative structure and use of narration.
Brother in particular can be seen as
leading directly to Harvie. Sound is
generally a little fluffy on these, but these were no
doubt made on a fraction of Harvie's
less than extravagant budget. Human Behavioural
Case Studies is framed 4:3 – well, a small 4:3
inside the 4:3 frame, as it happens – the rest non-anamorphic
1.85:1.
Not
indicated anywhere on the disk or the DVD box is that
Uncle, Cousin and Brother
all feature commentary tracks
by Elliot, which can be accessed by flipping to audio
track 3 on the remote when the film in question is playing.
Once again these are a fascinating addition and tend to
concentrate less on the technical aspects than on the
autobiographical source of the three films, which were
drawn largely from Elliot's own life and relations. There
is some lovely anecdotal information here, and is well
worth a listen just to hear how much of the three films
(Brother especially) is based closely
on fact.
Storyboard
featurette
(5:50) is framed anamorphic 16:9 and plays key sequences
from the film at the top of screen while the storyboards
for that scene scroll along the bottom, a technique that
works very well and would be nice to see employed on other
DVDs. The whole thing is narrated again by Elliot, who
gives us some very interesting technical information –
the low-tech approach to animating the TV screen is particularly
memorable – as well as the fact that the film cost $390,000
dollars and took 14 months to shoot. Elliot is particularly
pleased that not a single piece of CGI was used anywhere
in the film. And so he should be.
Character
model shots
feature photographs of the models for Harvie, Ruby, Val
and Hamish, which can be viewed from a number of angles
using the arrow keys on the remote.
Finally
there is a peculiar easter egg,
accessed moving the cursor right on the Extras menu so
that a cigarette appears in Harvie's mouth, treating us,
if that's the word, to a heartfelt rendering of Danny
Boy, though I'm afraid I don't know who is singing
and probably should.
Some
may feel that £9.99 is a bit steep for a 22 minute
animated short, but when you consider that the disk includes
the director's entire filmography to date, almost all
with commentary tracks, allowing us to trace the lineage
of the film and observe the development of the film-maker's
style, I think this is a fair price (especially since
you can pick it up on Play for £2 less). Indeed,
it would be nice to see the work of other animators collected
and presented in similar fashion, though can we have anamorphic
transfers next time please? It's not as though disc space
is at a premium here. In the mean time I'll go back to
humming a catchy song about God being better than cricket,
making 'pop' sounds with my mouth and dreaming of the
disk that features the work of David Anderson, he of Deadsy
and Door, in similarly friendly fashion.
