The Bead Game

The National Film Board of Canada sponsored a lot of animated films over the years and because of that Canadians have done amazingly well in the category of Best Animated Short Film at the Oscars. The Bead Game is yet another of these films, though I have got to admit that it's not nearly the film that Patel's Oscar-winning short, PARADISE, is a much better film--with breathtaking animation and a wonderful story. Here, in a film made almost a decade earlier, the animation style is far less spectacular and appears to be made from thousands of little beads. Like Paradise, the story is secondary to the animation but in this case the lesser quality of the visuals make this an interesting but especially compelling film.

I was absolutely floored for the six minutes that I spent viewing "The Bead Game". Using nothing more than cheap decorative beads, we are given a short history on the development of the animal side of nature. The end of "The Bead Game" was powerful statement on how animalistic and brutal humans are toward one another. In the twenty-five years since this short film was made, humans have advanced their intelligence in the areas of weaponry, brutality, and violence. It seems the most obvious and significant advance has been the marketing of mass media that seems to glorify violence. "The Bead Game" stands a sort of a testament and a warning that humanity is on a doomed path if we continue forth in the areas of war and destruction. I give this animated masterpiece a 10 out of 10!

PS: There are laws of war and revolution. One is the law of unintented consequences. You have to be very careful when you come upon a proverbial Pandora's Box. Once you choose that open that box, you don't completely expect every aftershock that will be wrought from it and it will take a very long time to overcome them.

Here ends my rant!

WOW!! The tree of life. beautiful stop-motion animation of the expansion of animal and human life on this world. in the most brutal way that can be explained. Enchanting.

Maybe I'm not cynical enough. I see some gave this low scores. The animation is beyond belief, using beads to show the history of our world and what we have become. The transformations are so precise and beautifully animated. I would say that one should not miss this.

At the start of this feature, I was convinced that we were looking down on a collection of magnetically charged toilet rolls as the tiny white circles bounce about the screen illustrating the evolution of what can only be called eating. Starting with what looked like an amoeba, they split and grow, change colour, spin, whirl and expand - but always the newest one eats the old one. As the chronology develops the creatures depicted get more indentifiable, larger, and hungrier before the arrival of man and the ante is upped rather - we really do know how to devour, kill and destroy on an exponential level. Where next? Accompanied by a simple, drum-based, soundtrack this is quite an entertaining animation along the lines of something Norman McLaren might have produced, and at times it looks like some of the characters might have actually been knitted!