The Street

Thanks to a well-told story, believable characters, and a highly unusual look, I can certainly recommend this solid Canadian short. If you're looking for Disney-like animation, you will be sorely disappointed, but the crude paintings fit the film well, and the story moved along at a fast enough pace to keep me interested. This isn't one of the National Film Board's best features, but it was still enjoyable, and it is worth a look if you ever come across it.

This uses an engagingly smudgy, visually accentuated, style of animation as we pass the time with a Jewish family patiently waiting for the death of grandmother. Patiently? Well not quite everyone. The grandson has been promised her room in their second floor flat since he was seven, so he might sooner she just got on with it. A view not entirely disputed by his mother. A bit of chat with his friends informs us all of a few post mortem facts courtesy of Lenny Kravitz and "Perry Mason" before they shut up for fear of her coming back to haunt them! Mother gets a gall stones and gran is moved to hospital Mother recovers and back comes gran. Will she go on forever? Will the lad ever get his room? Did you know that the last thing someone does when they are hanged is have an orgasm? Watch and see...

This short, nominated for an Academy Award, (I'm surprised it lost, though I've never seen the winner, as far as I know) is a funny, sad, sweet look at life through the eyes of a child growing up in Canada. An excellent adaptation (by the author) of a story by Mordecai Richter and yet another feather in the NFBC's cap. Caroline Leaf is a marvelous director and this is one of her best. Most recommended.

The only thing I knew about this short before watching was the plot description I read here on the site. "A young boy impatiently waits for his grandmother to die so he can have her room" was the gist of it.

So I was thinking this would go one of two ways, it would either be darkly humorous, or touching and human, maybe a combination of both. To my surprise and dismay, it turned out to be neither.

The simple and pedestrian story is told in a very mundane and uninvolving way. I felt little to no emotion watching it unfold.

But, my lord, that animation! It reminds me of those bumpers they used to show on PBS kids (is it harder to toot? or to tutor two tutors to toot?). So visually the film is a treat, but with the slog of a story, I can only give it a modest recommendation.

I've been through so many deaths in my seventy odd years. Death isn't terrible. The process of it is awful. It brings people into your life that you would not associate with under any circumstance. People say stupid things and invade one another's privacy. There is generally insensitivity and cruelty. Of course, the person we love is gone, but the whole rigmarole that takes place takes the starch out of the loving remembrances. The boy in this short is experiencing this. His friends are cruel and insensitive. His mother is a virago, given shrift by the death of her mother. I think the animation (which is quite remarkable) puts us in a kind of endless fog (which is appropriate).