Hey guys!
The Man Who Planted Trees
Was anyone else completely blown away by the fact that the entire film was done in colored pencil on textured cell-frames? The sheer amount of innovation put into the art of this film was incredible, and it's certainly going to serve as a new inspiration for me personally...
Aside from that, I'd like to comment on my appreciation for chronological time lapse films. I'm not a fan of time-travel movies, or anything that strays from the linear timeline-like sequence because the idea that it's anything but linear gives me great anxiety about how the universe works! Could I be in thirty thousand different timelines right now? Who knows! And that's a little terrifying.
I digress. In the film itself, I really appreciated the pace that was set from beginning to end. It was slow, graceful, and genuine, but not in a superficial or forced way. It felt like a warm story some grandparents would have told their grandkids - and that especially applies to the fact that the film dealt with some pretty major historical events without really bringing up the atrocities that went on. To the man who planted trees, these things neither bothered nor interfered with his work in the mountains, and that was okay. It didn't disregard the horror but it didn't engage in it either, which is a perspective I've never seen in a narrative about that time period.
Street of Crocodiles
Wow.
This is a film I'd really like to talk about with Jose and with everyone as a class. From my understanding, the dolls without eyes (with their innards replaced with cotton) were there to represent those who had fallen victim to the brainwashing of the atrocious anti-semitism that was accepted and normalized at the time. They not only became a shell of their former selves, but also held the facade of being completely normal. The things inside cannot be viewed from the outside - but there's a saying that "the eyes tell all". Maybe this is why you could see the cotton from the eyeless sockets. I feel like that may have been the only thing I picked up, if I was even right at all!
Overall, I really appreciate the film for what it brought to the table: stop-motion brilliance, the use of reflective light I'd never seen implemented into a stop-motion film beforehand, and dolls - although creepy - that each carried a message of what role they played in the story. That's what I took away from it, at least!
Krysar
For a lot of the films we'd watched this day, I wish I'd been prepped on how long each film was going to last. With a history of watching maybe 4 to 7 minute films, I felt a little antsy sitting in the chair after 15/30 minutes. If I had mentally prepared myself to watch something a little longer than usual, I may have enjoyed the film a little more.
Now I've rewatched the film, prepared to talk about it with an open mind and second wave of understanding.
The main theme in the film was greed, and how it transforms human behavior. For this post, I'd like to focus mainly on the rats.
When we feel greed, we want something badly. We want it no matter what gets in our way, no matter how much it costs, no matter ho frivolous it may be. After practicing this behavior, we become dependent on it for pleasure and happiness. Then we fall victim to the behavior, and instead of being able to control it, it controls us. That is why the rats are their own characters - they're insatiable greed, disembodied from their human counterparts, interested only in getting everything valuable their little paws can hold. Although I was a little disturbed that the animators had so many dead rat carcasses to freely move and mould in motion (and even more so when the live rats were put between them), it was a great use of symbolism.
Any thoughts guys? I'd really like to talk about what the flute-player meant and what kind of symbolism he represented!
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