Pear Cider and Cigarettes

This short, animated documentary/drama is an amazing and deeply personal work of art. It is both beautiful and ugly, showing the struggles of such strong, adult topics as addiction, alcoholism, and death. Although it is at times a very difficult and emotional film to watch, there's still a surprising sense of humor that flows throughout.

It all plays out like a radio show or an audio book, there is no dialogue, just detailed and, at times, hilarious narration. It is told from the perspective of the filmmaker, as he recounts his relationship with his daredevil and at times criminal friend Techno, from their childhood life to his crippling future as an alcoholic to his unfortunate and young death.

Techno obviously wasn't the smartest or nicest guy in the world, but the film allows us to feel sympathy for him.

This is definitely among the leading contenders in the best animated short at the Oscars this year!

Watching this feels like listening to a good friend unhurriedly tell you a deeply personal story about someone they care about. This feels rather unique to animation or even film because potential thematic elements aren't given any more weight than is necessary to describe the situations and characters- in other words "themes" are more the background and less the gravitational mass around which the story revolves.

This is where "Pear Cider and Cigarettes" excels in capturing the feeling of listening to your friend recount something, which usually doesn't involve an intentional theme nor carefully crafted character arcs, etc. Rather, the story is told weaving in and out of chronological order seemingly as the narrator remembers it without pretense.

The frame economy is reminiscent of many Japanese animations that understand how to make one drawing do more that one hundred, while the animation style itself, editing, and cinematography are all something very unique to Robert Valley and absolutely superb.

Combining the animation which is, generally speaking, a very slow and methodically produced medium with the aforementioned storytelling gives the film a very spontaneous feeling- a casualness of narrative contrasted with an elite professionalism of visuals.

Regarding what some call "flaws," I don't see them as such but rather the "character" or "texture" of the film, which fortunately hasn't been polished or edited away and thus feels very personal. Being able to really hear the artist's voice is one of the most powerful experiences a viewer can have, but that means, just like a conversation with a good friend, you can't demand their simultaneous efficiency and fastidious awareness of what they should omit for their audience to the detriment of how they naturally express themselves.

Pear Cider and Cigarettes (2016)

*** (out of 4)

Out of the five Oscar-nominations for Best Animated Short, this one here clocks in the longest and it's certainly the most adult one. Robert narrates the story of his best friend, Techno, who is pretty much that wild child that most people have a friend like. It turns out that Techno's wild partying days have finally caught up with him and he needs a liver transplant, which takes the two friends to China.

This here certainly isn't the best short from the five selections but it's an entertaining one. The film clocks in at 35-minutes, which is pretty much longer than the other four combined but it's got some very good images throughout and I thought the story itself was totally captivating. There's no question that once you started watching the picture that director-writer Robert Valley managed to hold your attention and as the film plays on you really start to wonder and care about the Techno character.

It's an unusual addiction story in that very few addicts will have the resources that are available to the main character of this animated short. But we've heard the same addiction stories a million times, so it's an interesting and haunting voyage into territory most of us won't experience. I agree with other reviewers about its flaws but it is still very well done and very much worth watching unless you need absolute perfection in your audio/visual entertainment.

I just saw this 35-minute film at the movie theater, at a show featuring the nominees for the Oscars for Best Animated Short Subjects released in 2016 -- plus two that should have been.

This is not one of my favorites of the set. First, at 35 minutes, it hardly seems right to call it a short subject, Second, it tells its story by means of a voice-over narration. It falls into a class of cartoons that are called slightingly "Radio With Pictures." This means it could have been offered as an audio drama, on the radio back when they offered stories in that medium regularly, or as something to listen to on your car's audio system as you travel down the road.

This is not to denigrate the story. It's a very interesting story about a man who travels to China to keep an eye on an old friend, whose carousing life has nearly killed him, while he undergoes a liver transplant. It's simply that the visual elements are not of primary interest and could be dispensed with entirely.