Don Hertzfeldt is like Pixar's exact opposite. He rejects florid detail and complex story for minimalist sketches and an approach to storytelling so simple that it verges on crude. Not to mention that is work is so odd that it still remains inaccessible to some. Which is a shame considering this man has produced some of the best animated work of this generation, from the above "Rejected" to his 2015 short film "World of Tomorrow" (which manages to tell a horrifically heart-wrenching story about the future through images so beautiful that they quite literally knock the wind out of the viewer). As gorgeous and unique as his work is, it is still very... well, weird. If you saw the couch gag for The Simpsons's episode "Clown in the Dumps", you've seen Hertzfeldt at his weirdest: unsettling caricatures of characters, chilling sound design, a general air of wrongness shared only by the best The Twilight Zone episodes. However, if you were to look past the jarring oddity of the gag, you would see that Hertzfeldt was making an extremely astute point about the degeneration of the show and how the characters have turned into grotesque vestiges of their former selves. That's sort of the essence of Hertzfeldt. Beauty wearing an ugly mask.
I would say that It's Such a Beautiful Day is Hertzfeldt's most accessible piece of work, but it's lack of a linear story and often disquieting pairing of visceral imagery and crackling sound might alienate some viewers. People looking to become acquainted with Hertzfeldt's art might be better off starting with "World of Tomorrow", which blends science-fiction with drama and humor and a distant darkness that is inhibited by the child protagonist's endearing dialogue, or even his college project "Lily and Jim", which is so painfully awkward that it is often very funny. However, their stories are no match for the simplistic brilliance of It's Such a Beautiful Day's plot: a young man named Bill is struggling with an unspecified mental disorder and trying to put together his shattered psyche before he meets his maker.
Originally animated as three separate short films that tell a continuous story about Bill and his existence (entitled "Everything Will Be Ok", "I am So Proud of You", and "It's Such a Beautiful Day", respectively), the film was met with high praise and a loyal cult following. It is, inarguably, an art film: philosophical musings and cosmic mediations are scored by classical music (recalling, for me at least, The Tree of Life, which actually shares use of Smentana's "Vltava (The Moldua)"). However, it is also heartrendingly universal in its exploitation of the most primal of human fears: memory loss. The proliferation of dementia into our daily lives through appropriate media representation and commercials of varying sadness has curtailed that fear slightly, but I imagine there is nothing more frightening when all the memories that define you and your past are suddenly gone.
Much like how 1984 theorized that if someone were to constantly amend and revise the past, nothing could ever substantially exist, It's Such a Beautiful Day posits that the past is key in shaping our futures. The film centers around mental illness and traces the cycles of it within the generations of Bill's family through comedic means (almost all of his relatives, though besieged by mental ailments, were hit by trains). Bill's tragic family history seems to set him up for failure: his brain is haunted by the ghosts of the people that have come before him. His past is concrete and so is his future. He knows that he will die and he will do so without any of the memories that define him. Though Bill's past and future are set in stone, his present no longer exists because he cannot remember anything and so floats endlessly from one experience to the next with no connection to the people or places he used to love.
The film particularly shines in its second act, where Bill pictures his inevitable death with startling clarity.
"He pictures himself having trouble breathing and waking to a room full of concerned faces. He'd been terrified of dying his entire life, and as much as he tried not to think about it, death was always in the back of his head, around every corner, and hovering on each horizon. He'd brushed shoulders with death on a few occasions, but in his care free youth it had all seemed like an abstract impossible thing to ever happen to him, but with each passing decade he began to gauge the time he probably had left, and by his forties he had come to know just one thing: you will only get older. The next thing you know, you're looking back instead of forwards, and now, at the climax of all those years of worry, sleepless nights and denials, Bill finally finds himself staring his death in the face surrounded by people he no longer recognises, and feel no closer attachment to than the thousands of relatives that came before. And as the sun continues to set, he finally comes to realise the dumb irony in how he'd been waiting for this moment his entire life. This stupid, awkward moment of death, that had invaded and distracted so many days with stress, and wasted time. If only he could travel back and impart some wisdom to his younger self, if only he could at least tell the young people in this room, he lifts an arm as if he's about to speak, but inexplicably says, 'it smells like dust and moonlight'".
There is so much to say about the film's stark, almost primitive, animation and its flawless combination of sound and music, but it is ultimately a beautiful story. Hertzfeldt is a veritable triple threat: he writes, directs, animates, and produces all of his work with only some editing assistance. This leaves him with the freedom to couple visuals with story as he pleases and the end result is a masterpiece of staggering proportions. The film is narrated entirely by Hertzfeldt, who is like a third-person projection of Bill's inner-monologue; his dry, occasionally deadpan reading of the lines gives the audience time to fully absorb what is being said without ever being pandered or condescended to.
And this movie has some truly beautiful lines. This is the sort of prose most writers can only dream of. Hertzfeldt has excised all unnecessary detail in favor of clarity and simplicity. His characters are blisteringly human; his descriptions of mundane events are both universal and intimate. Since the movie is largely episodic up until its final act, each scene is like a little micro chasm of a life the audience feels as if it has lived. Descriptions of events like sitting in front of the TV with a giant box of crackers and feeling weird about eating in front of the TV without it being on or making a pyramid out of staplers at work endear the audience to Bill. This is extremely important, as most of us don't know what it's like to suffer from hallucinations or have a massive stroke that leaves us unable to remember our loved ones. Grounding Bill's life in this kind of rainy reality--rendered in blacks and whites with the occasional splice of colorful footage--allows us to connect with him and go on this metaphysical journey with him. Bill's struggle with death and loss and mental murkiness is extremely identifiable, and even when he leaps from earth to the cosmos in all three acts (first in a vision of his head being launched into space after his death, then of his head detaching to explore the caverns of distant planets, then of him wandering the void after the Earth is obliterated), we travel with him.
It is the final scene, however, that truly showcases what a fantastic writer Hertzfeldt is. Inserting the quote here will cheapen the scene, as its power is partially contained in the gorgeous visuals of Bill's sketchy form wandering ethereal landscapes, but I feel it is important to indicate how eloquent this man is in describing the end of this journey. In a way, Bill never dies. The inevitability of death never truly comes for him, because he has suffered so greatly that he does not seek release. He is the soul of man, the essence of humanity, and that is something that will never be snuffed out.
It's such a beautiful day. Wait a minute, he's not gonna die is he? But he doesn't die... no, no, no... Bill, get up. Bill, get up. He's not gonna die--he can't die. He's not gonna die. Bill? Bill? He will spend hundreds of years traveling the world, learning all there is to know. He will learn every language. He will read every book. He will know every land. He will spend thousands of years creating stunning works of art. He will learn to meditate to control all pain as wars will be fought and great loves found and lost and found, lost, and found and found and found. And memories, built upon memories, until life runs on an endless loop. He will father hundreds of thousands of children, whose own exponential offspring he will slowly lose track of over the years, whose millions of beautiful lives will all eventually be swept from the earth. And still, Bill will continue. He will learn more than any being in history, but Death will forever be a stranger to him. People will come and go until names lose all meaning, until people lose all meaning and vanish entirely from the world. And still, Bill will live on. He will befriend the next inhabitants of the Earth, beings of light who revere him as a God. And Bill will outlive them all. For millions and millions of years... Exploring, learning, living, until the Earth is swallowed beneath his feet. Until the sun is long since gone. Until time loses all meaning and the moment comes that he knows only the position of the stars and sees them whether his eyes are closed or opened. Until he forgets his name and the place he had once come from. He lives and he lives, until all of the lights go out.This final monologue, spoken in Hertzfeldt's serene, contemplative drawl, is not so much tear-jerking as it is chest-crushing. It still astounds me that this mere assembly of words can evoke the same physical response one feels when they are on the precipice of crying. I still want to cry when I hear the final line, which is accompanied by Bill superimposed over the void while the stars slowly blink out around him and Chopin's concerto no. 1 in E minor tinkles to a close. This is art. This is cinema. This is what people mean when they talk about the illusion of movement, of how the flicker across a screen makes us believe we are seeing something real and feeling something real too. It may not be writing at its most conventional, but it's still story-telling and, as we all know, storytelling is the lifeblood of art. Sometimes, we don't need all the florid detail and bombastic garnishments to make something beautiful: we just need a stick figure.
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