The Meaning of Life

If one is willing to look into this without a one minute attention span, you will find yourself in there. You may not like what you see, but it's there. We are taken from the beginnings of life and brought through the development of civilization on Earth and then beyond that. Excellent storytelling in the simplest yet esoteric way possible.

An astonishing film with ideas that could not be expressed in any other way than animation. In simplest terms, THE MEANING OF LIFE views life develop on Earth from simple creatures to humankind to the further evolved mutants that arise following our extinction.

But there's a wealth of passionate ideas going on under the surface that are hard to verbalize. When the music and animation kicks in at those key moments, you just understand entirely through pure feeling what Hertzfeldt's communicating - and that's what Art is all about.

Trying to intellectualize and dissect a piece like this is like trying to scientifically quantify the beauty of a painting of flowers! You either "get" the painting because it hits the right chord with you, or you don't. I found the film totally lacking in pretension and very simple, like such a painting. Maybe it's just beautiful and meant to be enjoyed.

There are fans of Don Hertzfeldt's work and then there are fans of REJECTED. Anyone curious to see Hertzfeldt continue to grow while challenging and pushing the envelope of indie animation should not miss this short. Fans of REJECTED who're expecting more of the same maybe need not apply.

On the other hand, I disagree with the confused reviews about how MEANING isn't like his other work (that is, his "earlier, funny movies" ...shades of STARDUST MEMORIES?). Hertzfeldtian surrealism, existentialism, and - most importantly - his toying with audience expectations are all here. He pulled the rug out from under us during BILLY'S BALLOON and REJECTED, and now that we're expecting the same thing, he masterfully pulls the rug out again.

The author obviously thinks he is making some profound statements about how life is, and, brother, this is so pretentious it's ridiculous. Worse than that, much of this animated short film will give you a headache, not entertainment. There is a segment early on which lasts for seems like eternity in which many people all talking at once. In other words, this movie assault your senses - in a negative way.

Putting it simply: this is not fun to watch.

Much of the other times, stick figures grunt, groan, make bird noises, pig noises, alien gibberish and just plain assault your ears. The stick figures are not clever, nor entertaining, just something that looks like weirdo drew while on drugs.

Because I enjoy the innovative artwork on all of these Animation DVD collections, I find it hard to dislike anything but this one - and another unnamed one - are just awful. The only redeeming quality on "The Meaning Of Life" was the excellent classical music score.

The evolution of humanity, through countless eons.

The cartoonist's title sequence shows images of black and white flames. And then a human body falls down through it decaying. (A human stick figure)

Next sequence is stick figures unique to the cartoonist's tradition walks and we are reflected of each one saying same dialogue lines. Then the crowd increases. And it becomes chaos of mixture and confusion. And in an instance all are dead and we see black clouds and confusion.

We have a starry sequence later.

And then mutation. Which was my first thought after the observation but later I realised it was a reflection of a parallel universe and how alien life would be behaving and it is accordingly reflected.

We see a discussion with an alien language. We see stars and other beautiful aspects floating around after the discussion.

And then slowly it concludes to the end title.

It's more like a mindless observation of life without any logic or judgement. The film maker establishes his violent and dark abstract style to theme and it is a very unique short animation.

Overall - 3.5/5

There's nothing to this short film. I like Don Hertzfeldt's other works so I was baffled and disappointed by this one. It shows a lot of imaginative life forms which might suit a bored artist's flipbook but as an actual film I got nothing out of it and found no meaning in it.