Last year's Oscar-Nominated animated shorts show had me mildly concerned; one of the nominees was GARDEN PARTY, a CGI effort, in which a roving camera wanders around a house, looking at all the frogs. It might have been reality for all I could tell and that's what's disturbing. If animation is indistinguishable from reality, does it have any particular artistic value? Does it not simply reduce the category to a sub-category of special effects, a technical Oscar like glass painting or green-screen technician? William Demille used to teach a course on title writing and, yes, there are still titles used in the body of a movie, but there's no Oscar for Best Title Writing, just as color cinematography and black and white cinematography no longer have separate categories. Now they're simple choices made on the basis of taste and money.
It seems to me that unless animation tells stories that live action cannot, or tells them better, then it is a dying branch of movie-making, and let's not bother. It will appeal nostalgically to a smaller and smaller group of people, considering themes that appeal to the very old until some day some one will say "Why are we bothering?" and drag out the woolsack to make room for a comfortable chair for the Chancellor.
An elderly lady is sitting while a young woman packs the house's furnishings. As the lady sips tea, she remembers being a child at the beach, a young woman in love, and a young mother with her own child at the beach.
If animation is at risk of dying out as an art form because there is no story it can tell that cannot be told in a realistic fashion, then sure the themes it will adopt will be those that appeal to a shrinking, aging population. Such themes include fear of senility, aging out of your home and life.... in short the themes of this movie.
On the other hand, this offers the story in a pleasant impressionist manner. So, despite my fears, I liked it a lot.
