Cousin

The second installment in animator Adam Elliot's autobiographical trilogy, 'Cousin' just about matches the mastery of the film preceding it. In only four minutes, Elliot tells a story infused with humour, absurdity, sadness, and beauty. The animation is strongly stylized, but fitting; the short itself is highly realistic, and yet also contains visuals of an almost surreal nature. Something feels off about the whole thing, but that's okay, because that's how it should be. Something SHOULD be feeling off.

Like Adam Elliot's "Brother," this is a short story of one of the narrator's family, in this case an unnamed older cousin. The kid looked a lot like his brother, except without one of lenses being blacked out on his glasses. Otherwise, he had the exact same nerdy face.

What was different was that this "cousin" had a serious illness but could still do some amazing things, especially with his one good arm. All the anecdotes about this boy are really fascinating and told with the kind of narration that gets 100 percent of your attention.

This is short, but great storytelling. Elliot does an outstanding job of combing humor and tragedy. The claymation is real hoot to view, too! I like the fact the filmmaker did this series in black-and-white, too. It makes the claymation figures all the more dramatic, yet at the same time keeping us focused on the narration.

I recently viewed the up-and-comer Adam Elliot's three short animated films "Cousin, Brother, Uncle" at the Durango Film Festival and was in awe. Adam Elliot has combined the light-hearted animation that made "Wallace and Gromit" famous into a film that in only ten minutes moves the viewer deeply. Elliot takes on such issues as death, suicide, disease, alcoholism, and family problems by showing us his memories of his cousin with multiple sclerosis, his lonely uncle whose wife committed suicide, and his experiences with his brother who died at a young age. Each short is designed to move the audience, but present these serious issues in a sort of light-hearted pill for the audience to take in. I look forward to seeing more of Adam Elliot's work in the future.

This is one of three odd little films made by Adam Benjamin Elliot. The trilogy consists of UNCLE, COUSIN and BROTHER. All three are very similar in style--all with similar claymation, all in black and white and all with very deadpan narration. All three films also are quite funny and very poignant.

COUSIN is a strange story about the narrator's cousin. This young boy had cerebral palsy and was a very odd person, but also more complex and cool than many might assume he'd be due to the disability. The remembrances range from very funny, to just plain weird to very poignant and touching.

Now the claymation quality is just okay, but because the film captivates the viewer so quickly and I found after I saw one I was strongly compelled to seek out the others, then this was a very effective film. One well worth seeing--particularly for lovers of shorts and animation.

If you want to see this or the other two videos, go to http://www.atomfilms.com/ .