Homem

Another brilliant piece of work from Steve Cutts, this animated short film tells the history of humankind through the lens of consumerism. In his quest to become king of the hill, man destroys nature, wipes out biodiversity, and pollutes the land and oceans-only to end up ruling over a planet that's become one giant junkyard.

The animation style is simple, but the storytelling is so clever that you can't help but keep watching, wondering what's next. It's a dark comedy, but also a sharply humorous one. The ending delivers a smart twist-and serves as a final wake-up call to rethink the direction we're heading as a consumerism-driven society. The classical music is the perfect finishing touch.

I guess "Man" is the reason for every bad thing that has ever happened. 500,000 years ago, a man appears wearing a "Welcome" tee-shirt. He proceeds to take on everything he meets, destroying, killing, wasting, and on and on. Steve Cutts seems to be bent on constant blaming for a paradise he seems to have in mind. There is no new territory from several of his other targets. It is interesting, however, in its overstatement.

This side-scrolling animation starts with a man walking through time and space on Earth. As he walks he freely kills, consumes, destroys, harvests and pollutes – all at increasing rates and at an increasing cost. This short film is quite a depressing one in some ways because essentially it tells the story of us as humans on this planet. OK some of the specifics (hunting for sport, fur for fashion) may not apply to all individuals, but generally it is true of us as a race. It is prevented from being depressing by the comical and clever way in which it is presented as our "man" walks carefree through life just destroying as he goes.

The animation is black and white but is big bold shapes and an old Disney feel to the shapes and movements of the characters, this combined with the humorous actions (stepping right into two snakes to make them boots for instance) gives the film a nice mix of the comic but yet never takes us away from the dark reality that, while the short may be exaggerated for comedic effect, none of the action events or outcomes are. The animation from Cutts is very well done and it builds in complexity as the music also builds – like a perverse, destructive version of Disney's Fantasia. It is short but effective, managing to be as darkly funny as it is factually depressing.

I can already imagine, in my mind, the average self-important middle school teacher who has to discuss environmental issues in class and, instead of preparing a lesson, decides to show the class this short movie and invites the students to debate on how profound it supposedly is.

I wouldn't mind too much an obvious message and a relatively superficial degree of understanding of the world, if at least the plot devices used to convey it were vaguely original. Instead, we get a plot essentially recycled from the beginning of Douglas Adams's "A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (even though I wouldn't be surprised if it had been done earlier).

Stylistically well-done, though.

Steve Cutts narrates greediness, and indifference to natural limits, in a fascinating journey through time (from right to left).