The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation

A deeply personal response to the filmmaker's relationship with his father using photos, animation, home movies and characterized narration. It revolves around a moot interview that Canemaker has with his dead father. There are some interesting surprises. A blend of points through reflection, recounting, imagined responses and opinion all of which to build a story regarding a son's frustration with knowing little of his father's past and which questions why his father tore strips off him as a kid. Much of the animation is raw and free flowing. Worth watching if you are interested in animated documentaries and the issues it covers. It's quite bleak, but not absent of humour and charm.

Add my voice to those who are underwhelmed with this Oscar winning short. This is the personal story of filmmaker John Canemaker attempting to come to terms with his deceased father. Using a variety of animation techniques, home movies and photos Camemaker imagines a conversation between himself and his father. What were his father's secrets and why did his Dad do the things he did? Canemaker takes a stab at trying to work out things, but because the answers were never revealed in life the answers revealed here seem some how more wishful thinking than anything else. Its not bad but it never really seemed to amount to much. The problem with the film for me was that the material seems to be almost too personal, it never transcended into a universalness that great stories do. Its not bad, really, its not, its not great, certainly not best of the year (Bill Plymton's Fan and the Flower is infinitely better as are the other Oscar nominated shorts).

"The Moon and the Son" was the most breathtaking animated film I have ever seen. This was due to it's truthful content. A simple imagined conversation between a man and his deceased father gives insights to the man's need for understanding as well as the understanding that is unveiled. This story is brilliantly told and illustrated. I would highly recommend people to watch this gem. It touched my heart. I laughed. I cried. I personalized. And it made me think. The odyssey of a persons search for heritage, love, acceptance, understanding, empathy is all encompassing. This short is masterful in it's simplicity. It will touch your heart and possibly open it and expand it, too. Two thumbs way up!

John Canemaker's Academy Award-winning gritty look at his father starts out soft but quickly gets rough. "The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation" features John Turturro as the son and Eli Wallach as the dad. It's not anything great, but it's not one that you'll forget easily. It might be of interest to people who want to watch every Oscar-winning documentary, but not to most people.

There are a number of folks who think baring their all emotionally must, somehow, equal ART. This movie lies there as the definitive proof that that is not the case; despite how many idiots are praising it for its "honesty."

It is, instead, brilliantly dishonest. The filmmaker has issues with his daddy. After apparently never having confronted his father about the things that bothered him while he was alive, the filmmaker decided to make up a conversation with his dad into which he, the filmmaker, would put words into his dead father's mouth, making it clear it was all his fault.

The film comes across as whiny and nasty, a post-death "f*** you" to his old man.

There is no imagination, style or talent for imagery revealed in the pedestrian animation with which he illustrates all this.

Watching it is like watching a child throw a particularly nasty childhood tantrum, and that is all I can remember of this self-absorbed film.