When the Day Breaks

WHEN THE DAY BREAKS was nominated for the Oscar for Best Animated Short Film in 2000. It lost to the amazing THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA--a truly great film due its brilliant graphics.

WHEN THE DAY BREAKS looked like a beautiful cartoon in search of a plot. It is very lovely to look at and at times is very stunning visually, but it also seems as if all the energy went into the graphics and little went into the plot--like it was, at best, of secondary importance. After you get over the impact of the great graphics and that all the animals are anthropomorphized (i.e., look and act like people), then what occurs seems dull and the early 30s style of music does nothing to perk it up in the least. It's worth a look--especially for artists, but just expect to be particularly engaged.

This has something of a very early, silent film look to it as a neatly dressed singing pig discovers that the milk in her fridge could walk to the bin by itself, so she dons her coat and heads out to replenish her supply. Walking into the shop, she slams straight into a rooster carrying his own shopping. Despite his lemons hitting the pavement, he keeps on walking - and that's his mistake! The story itself isn't so hot here, but the flash-frame animations are really effective at giving us an almost photographic narrative at some stages then a more continuous stream of imagery as the thrust of what has just happened sinks in for our tea-making shopper. Loads of animals with human traits, carrying out human tasks, watching television - accompanied by a very 1940s wartime-sounding soundtrack and all connected, it would seem, by their shared use of the electricity network. Quirky and innovative, this - and a lot happens before breakfast.

This animated short by Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis seems mostly an exploration of how connected people are in a city and how they affect each other. A rooster and a pig have breakfast in separate apartments, but both of them find themselves lacking in something they need to complete the breakfast, so they both go out to a grocery store. Once there they run into each other, causing the rooster to drop his lemons, one of which goes down a drain. As the pig walks into the store regretfully, the rooster turns huffily away and gets hit by a car, an event the pig sees and which causes her to feel a lot of regret.

The animation uses minimal backgrounds, causing the characters to kind of float around in space, which is interesting because as the animation is about how connected they are, nobody seems really connected to anything. It goes through electric cords and pipes, streets and electrical signals to show many characters all experiencing the same day, often in the same way, while also showing how they seem to affect each other. So while nobody seems to have any relationship with each other, they are all affected by the existence of each other.

I guess such an existential situation is interesting to think about, but it's not really that interesting to look at and gets pretty slow. Also, I can't really seem to figure out why they are animal, though it does provide an opportunity for quite a few sight-gags. It's well done and very well thought-out, but I'm not quite sure I like it that much.

--PolarisDiB

This is one of those films that features our interconnectedness. Mrs. Pig and Mr. Rooster both start their days with the mundane task of breakfast. When it is discovered that they need an item at a grocery store, their lives are changed. The point presented is the way our neurons and our electrons are part of a flow. Excellent animation in this award winning feature. I thought the drawing was excellent.

Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis are a Canadian animation team. Early in their careers they contributed animation to a documentary about Noam Chomsky. In 1999 they released a cartoon short that received an Academy Award nomination: "When the Day Breaks". This short uses animals as an allegory for people's relationships with each other. I liked what they did with it. The short reminds us that not every animated production has to be an extravagant feature with the voices of celebrities.

I read that to create the scenes for "When the Day Breaks", Tilby and Forbis shot scenes with a Hi-8 camera, printed stills from the footage, and then drew on the stills. The short took approximately four years to complete. In the end, it had a good result. I'd like to see more of their work.

The short is available on the National Film Board of Canada's website.