Courtesy of Cinemad Presents
I was unaware of the cult that is Don Hertzfeldt until I was introduced to this film one lonesome night, sitting alone with a big bowel of popcorn. I was loopy from some prescription painkillers that I was taking for my back, and I wanted to watch something light, perhaps happy, to soothe my restless mind. Boy was I wrong to choose this film, which for all manner of purposes is one of the most ruthless, hard-hearted pieces of animation I have ever seen.
Hertzfeldt first found fame when he was nominated for Best Animated Short in 2000 for the film “Rejected.” Since then he has made many animated shorts, all relying on the same themes and motifs: destruction, beauty, meandering, the viciousness of life, the exacting nature of time, etc. Though there is something utterly menacing and frank in his shorts, they generally rely on narrative tension, and bring you into a world that makes you uncomfortable, but also satiates a part of you that wants to hear you aren’t the only crazy one in existence.
“It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” is Hertzfeldt’s first feature length film, and it puts together three of his shorter films, “Everything Will Be OK” (2006), “I Am So Proud of You,” (2008), and the eponymous “It’s Such a Beautiful Day,” (2011). Though there’s somewhat of a disconnect in the emotional responses of each segment, the film as a whole always considers its audience, and swerves between the innate beauty of this world, and its cynical destruction. It’s a film that you can share with your friends, but it’s better to experience alone, maybe in the dark, so you can truly feel and react to the film’s crazed haphazardness.
This is a film that really makes you feel something elicit, even human. Steve Pate, of The Chicagoist has said “It's an unmistakably cardiac event, the kind that great art can elicit when something profound and undeniably true is conveyed about the human condition.” I couldn’t say it any better myself.
