Ms. Dana Culling releases her biggest piece yet for The Movie Sleuth. Please read her wonderful list of stop-motion animated shorts.
Stop-motion
animation brings together the artistry of the centuries-old traditions of
puppetry and the simple beauty of animation’s motion dance. As an art form, it
stands on the shoulders of ancient traditions of figure manipulation, and much
of the time, throws itself headlong across the Uncanny Valley – thus landing
itself squarely in worlds which are rare to reach in other genres and modes of
storytelling.
Stop-motion
is a genre often played with alongside other methods of animation – it is not
uncommon, for example, for puppet animation to be augmented with CGI, or
traditionally cel-drawn animation. It is a painstaking process by which
characters and their microcosmic universes are given breadth and depth in a
world not terribly unlike our own; the minutest of aspects must be crafted with
a precise level of detail.
But there is
room within the genre for imperfection. Indeed, within many of the best
stop-motion works exist a certain grit, a very human element of grime and dust
and fingerprints. These are works of the flesh and physical world, dented by
the love of their crafters and hewn from clay, wood, fabric, metal, silicon,
and many other three-dimensional materials. The stories they tell are equally
visceral, and as much a part of their creators as the pairs of hands which
endow them with life.
In this list
is included a miscellany of stop-motion short films, from various cultures and
across different years. Each of these films employs meticulous craftsmanship
and months of defined work whose detail is often to maddening scale. There are,
of course, many feature-length stop-motion films which are worthy of attention
– but this list concentrates itself on those stories which are unfolded in
miniature; with mere minutes of running time and, in many cases, without
dialogue, these are films which set the standard in a very real sense – and are
the reasons films like Charlie Kaufman’s Anomalisa,
or Tim Burton’s Corpse Bride, for
example, could come to be. They are perhaps among the best of the best, showcasing
the beauty and intuitive nature of stop-motion itself.
Over time,
The Movie Sleuth will revisit stop-motion animation, and list several more
worthy films to add to this list.
So as not to
give any sense of ‘numbering’ these films in terms of quality, this list is
organized alphabetically by short film title.
Balance – Wolfgang and Christoph Lauenstein,
1989
This bleak
contemplation of human selfishness and the difficulty of maintaining balance
between desire and survival won the Academy Award for Best Animated Short in
1989, and its final frames capture almost perfectly the hopelessness and
desolation it captures so adeptly throughout.
Prisoners
kept in stasis on a floating platform must move in synchrony to keep the ground
flat beneath them, lest they fall to their deaths when the plane shifts and
tilts. They seem unfazed by this until one of them casts his fishing line out
into the void and brings a music box on board, throwing off the weight
distribution and slowly beginning to reveal the diabolical greed and egoistic
self-preservation in each of the prisoners, each himself an island in the
strange dimension. As their need awakens, their solidarity begins to crumble
until the final, heartbreaking scene.
The joyless,
colorless atmosphere is brightened only by the red of the coveted object, the
stilted movements of each of the puppets is softened only when he can
appreciate the beauty it possesses. The very ambiguity of the premise and its
characters – are these individual men, or are they symbolic of the parts of a
single person? – provides what amounts to some brilliant, if heavy-handed,
symbolism.
Crooked Rot – David Firth, 2008
Perhaps best
known as the creator of the Salad Fingers series, David Firth’s stop-motion
films tend toward even more macabre and strange territory. Often dealing with
his own inner demons of depression, mental illness, and the suffering inherent
in dealing with such issues, the images in his animation can be downright
disturbing.
Crooked Rot
is a static nightmare circus, a portrait of self-loathing and personal hell
which works oddly as well if taken as a metaphor for the constant noise and
bombardment of modern culture. Its painful imagery straddles the line between
the internal and the external, mounting a war between perception and object
amidst the terror and helplessness of humanity.
Firth’s
surrealist style and sensibilities in the use of sound create a wildly
dystopian brainpan, through which the reflection expresses itself as the
reality, and through which the din of nihilism speaks in harsh obscurities and
wild-eyed schizophrenia.
Door – David “Deadsy” Anderson, 1990
Created in a
vortex of multi-media, Door is included here because its most striking scenes
are produced in stop-motion. A surreal collaboration between Anderson and
author Russell Hoban, who both penned and narrated the short in dizzy, frenzied
disarray, the film utilizes photographic manipulation and film pixilation in
addition to stop-motion to get inside the emotional implications of
relationships and connections between people, the mysteries between them and
the worlds within them.
With broken,
disjointed visuals and a script out of Hoban's most deliciously terrifying
stupefaction, the film carries itself much like a lucid dream. The nature of
memory, the unlocking of the subconscious - these, and the strangeness and
painful loneliness implicit in the relationships we weave and sever, dervish
through scenes reminiscent of Norman McLaren; the decoupage of imagery is as
keenly honest as it is hectic, demarcating in visual language the murky magical
realism of Hoban's words.
Anderson's
animation is a perfect visual vehicle for Hoban, populated as it is by themes
of restraint and locked secrets, tiny blink-and-they're-missed moments of sheer
psychological symbolism and scenes of existential horror. Door is a universe
unto itself, much like Hoban's novels, built with the dark whimsy and
apocalyptic anguish of his most treasured works, yet written specifically - and
perfectly - for the genre.
The Insects’ Christmas – Wladyslaw Starewicz, 1913
An early
master of the medium, Starewicz’s work carries a wild elegance, a decorated
modus of imperfection which highlights the blemished beauty of the natural
world. Much like Nature itself, there is a stark delicacy within this film,
belying the mysticism inherent in the world of its winter woods and the
strange, alien beauty of its brand of holiday joy.
The delicate
magic of this quiet little tale is carried by a tree ornament of Father
Christmas, who descends from his watchful place amid the evergreen branches of
his home to sprinkle his winter spells across the tiniest of the forest
creatures. Starewicz treats Nature as her own character, imbuing her with a
gentle grace as the insects revel in their wonderland. Festooned with beaded
boughs and the merry enchantments of its host, The Insects’ Christmas
celebrates the oft-forgotten world which hides in the space beneath our feet.
Starewicz’s
technique is one of heightened detail and dreamlike atmosphere; as ladybugs and
grasshoppers cavort through the snow at the command of Father Christmas, and
the courtly frog comes to join him in his reverie, there is a sense that, even
amidst the season of darkness and death throughout the wood, the smallest
sparks of enjoyment might still come to warm those who deserve it most.
Ruka (The Hand) – Jiří Trnka, 1965
Celebrated
as the “Walt Disney of Eastern Europe”, Czech puppet animator Trnka ended his
onscreen life with this incredibly lovely film, which was completed just a few
years prior to his death. A symbolic statement against tyranny and the literal
creative stifling presence of a hand of authority, Ruka pits the meta-concept
against what is perhaps an even more strident example – a puppet who is a
sculptor.
The titular
Hand – a live-action representation of both censorship, and, one gets the
impression, public whims when it comes to art and popular concepts. As the Hand
demands the little puppet artist recreate its own five-fingered glory, the
creature begins to sink into an existential crisis and despairs of the work it
wants to – but is not permitted to – create.
The greatest
irony is that Ruka itself was
subjected to censorship in his native country for many years, but whether one
chooses to see a political allegory decrying the severe hand of government or
the difficulties inherent in being a true artist pigeonholed against the
desires of the masses in order to make a living, Trnka’s film is a testament to
his talent and the genius of the medium of puppet animation.
The Sandman – Paul Berry, 1991
This film is
commonly found on “best of” lists of creepy animated shorts, and with good
reason. Berry, whose work will be familiar to anyone who has seen The Nightmare
Before Christmas or James and the Giant Peach, released this gorgeously
atmospheric short film a year before Nightmare was in theaters.
Berry based
his version of the Sandman’s tale on a German short story, Der Sandmann,
written by E.T.A. Hoffmann in 1816. While it is not a direct adaptation of the
Hoffmann story, some of the Freudian thematic elements of uncanniness are
present in this dark little piece.
Its titular
character a demonic Man-in-the-Moon, the film preys upon our most basic
childhood terrors of what lurks in the shadows as we fall asleep. The haunting
piano leitmotif slithering alongside the birdlike Sandman through the moonlight
is chilling enough – but the ending may be something seen in nightmares, if
indeed sleep is possible after seeing it.
Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions – Henry Selick, 1991
Selick, like
Tim Burton before him, is better known as a director of feature-length
stop-motion animated films – but this earlier foray into his filmmaking is
equally bizarre, merging the movements of living dolls with tonally unusual
music and an oddly endearing premise.
Live actor
Mark Steger portrays “Slow Bob” Potemkin, who is transported by mysterious
reptile grotesqueries into a world of cut-out paper horrors – the “lower”, or
second, dimension – as a pair of conjoined twins spy on his rising psychosis
from a peephole before descending upon his temporal doom with glee.
Stylistically reminiscent of Selick’s contemporaries Paul Berry and even, to an
extent, Tim Burton, it is the almost Dadaist cousin of their films on this very
list.
A strange
and ominous little film, Slow Bob’s journey into heroism in the Lower
Dimensions was intended to be the pilot for a surrealist animated series, but
it was not to be. Selick chose instead to focus on feature-length films,
joining Burton and Berry in making The Nightmare Before Christmas before going
on to work on the films he is perhaps best known for -- the feature stop-motion
adaptation of Roald Dahl’s James and the
Giant Peach, and the feature-length Coraline,
both of which carry his signature visual style and penchant for disjointed
storytelling.
The Stain – Marjut Rimminen / Christine Roche,
1991
The Stain, a dissection of family secrets and the
complexity of emotions in familial relationships coat the heart of this
multi-media animated short film with a sinister melancholy. In broad strokes
and rhythmic, sing-song narration which narrows its focus as the tale unwinds,
the hidden depths of an insular household bloom in a series of stark opposites.
The sheer
brightness and candor of the outside world is contrasted stringently by a dark
patina within the home and within the hearts of the protagonists. Severe lines
and jerky, almost violent animation bring to life a culmination of terrible
secrecy and silence.
Brutally
beautiful, The Stain takes common
tropes from Rimminen’s feminism and sheds light onto a deeply personal
microcosm; its brilliance is in the deft maneuvering it manages around politics
in order to tell the deceptively simple story of dishonesty, jealousy, and
anguish that can exist within bonds of love.
Tephrasect – Justin Curfman, 2004
The austere,
filtered world of Justin Curfman’s Tephrasect
is illumined by a snowy dream logic, sifting through the grit and silence from
the powdery residue of mechanical moths’ wings. Better known as a musician and
painter, Curfman’s animation brings a less insular eye to the artist’s vision –
and to his talent as a builder of layers.
Curfman’s
puppets are both built and maneuvered with careful and beautiful disharmony;
the solemn vacuum of their interactions and the skewed lunacies of their
perspectives unfold with a restraint that is almost gentle. Coated with the
deft broad symbolism which delineates Curfman’s best work, it meanders through
the subconscious and glues itself obstinately without saying a word.
There are
moments – particularly highlighted by the music of Curfman’s Feeding Fingers
project, which at the time of this film’s production was as yet two years away
from forming cohesively – during which Tephrasect
strips away its own brash expectations, nestling narratively in the space
between sentiment and sorrow. Curfman’s genius is in the suspension of poetic
complexity – at its most honest, his puppetry is existential brutality, dashed
through with a queasy emotional voice still developing its nuances.
Vincent – Tim Burton, 1982
Charmingly
reminiscent of Edward Gorey and Maurice Sendak, this early rhyming tale is a
surprisingly sweet mini-fantasy made when Burton was still working as an
animator at Disney. Narrated with almost childish glee by Vincent Price, it is
the very picture of the deliciously creepy side of a precocious child’s
imagination.
Eight-year-old
Vincent – whose visage is quite similar to Victor in Burton’s Frankenweenie – fantasizes that he
embodies the dark spirit of his namesake, inhabiting the delightful madness of
a young boy’s literary make-believe world. His monstrous machinations are told
in verse written by Burton himself, in a celebration of the curiosity and
audacious oddness that define creative children.
While not as
well-known as Burton’s theatrical feature stop-motion efforts, the short stands as a testament to his gift of
combining horror tropes and innocent adorability in his characters, and proves
itself as the roots of his puppet design aesthetic. Those acquainted with the
most popular of his animated films will find the familiar and the beloved in Vincent, both in substance and in style.
These are
merely a handful of some of the wondrous, incredible stop-motions works out
there – and we will return with another list of ten more essential stop-motion
animated short films soon, so stay tuned.
-Dana Culling