It's Such a Beautiful Day (2012)

Director: Don Hertzfeldt
Writer(s): Don Hertzfeldt
Starring: Sara Cushman, Don Hertzfeldt

I stumbled upon this on Netflix, and was massively intrigued upon seeing just how well-received it was. Everyone seemed to be enamored by It’s Such a Beautiful Day, a mostly-animated movie by Don Hertzfeldt, a man whose works I had never seen before. As “training” for this, and to just get acquainted with his style, I checked out a couple of his more popular short films, and discovered that they utilized stick figures, absurdist humor and surrealism, three themes that were down my alley, though I also knew going in that this was also supposed to feature a heavy dose of drama.

If I understand correctly, this movie is an entire trilogy of short films that were combined to form one feature-length movie, and all of them center around Bill, a stick figure person who is losing his memory. His desolate life, and the life of those around him, are examined in sometimes poignant, sometimes comical, and sometimes flat-out repetitive detail, and all in Hertzfeldt’s trademark animation style.

The eye for animation that Hertzfeldt has isn’t very surprising, considering all of his major works are animated in this way. What did shock me is the way in which the material is presented: there’s plenty of his obligatory animation, but it’s also blended with some live-action footage, collages of different scenes, as well as some excellent sound design, that uses both noise and silence to solid effect. When you realize that Hertzfeldt was the single man responsible for all of this, it's a feat that becomes even more impressive.

There is no doubt that there are moments of genuine sadness in It’s a Beautiful Day; often, these scenes come out of nowhere, and it’s almost inexplicable that any of the emotional stuff works at all. One moment Bill’s having a dream that a fish is growing out of his head (there is still plenty of surrealism and absurdism here for all of the longtime Hertzfeldt fans), and then the next moment we flash back to a scene of Bill as a child that somehow packs almost as much of a punch as if we are looking at pictures of our own childhood. Only we’re looking at stick figures; it’s amazing the emotions that Hertzfeldt can reach using only stick figures and some well-blended photographs/footage.

But this movie doesn’t always hit. In fact, it misses more than most would lead you to believe. For someone with such a knack for presentation, I was pretty surprised that Hertzfeldt utilized such a heavy reliance on the narrator. There were several scenes that, at least in my opinion, would have been infinitely more powerful had the images been allowed to speak for themselves; very rarely is any scene given a reprieve from the overused narrator, who even quotes dialogue clearly written on the screen. There is no doubt that a narrator was needed, but I think his presence could have been scaled back quite a bit, without eliminating any of its emotional resonance.

I also thought there were some pacing issues: a couple scenes go on for way too long, without seeming to serve much of a point. For example, there is a sequence where Bill is waiting for a bus at the bus stop (where he spends a good amount of screentime), and we watch a man use a leaf blower for an absurd amount of time, and then…that’s it. Scene ends. It’s surrounded by the framework that life is essentially a series of droll events that merely give way to death, but these sequences, rather than strengthening the story, just felt like overkill.

Speaking of which, I can also take just as much doom and gloom as the next guy—in fact, I really welcome it—but the film’s constant, over-the-top obsession with death was a real mood-killer for me.  It starts off a fascinating study--after all, who isn't intrigued, and completely terrified, by the thought of what actually happens after we die--but there's always a limit to how many times someone can ponder something before it crosses into "annoyance", and good ol' Bill obliterates that.  To counterbalance the bleak material, It’s Such a Beautiful Day has moments of attempted humor, but most of them were redundant and fell a little flat. I personally thought that Hertzfeldt’s comedy style was at odds with the source material (though, to be fair, the vast majority of viewers seem to heartily disagree); imagine "Tim & Eric" trying to toss in a serious plotline in between their non-sequitur weirdness, and you’ll come pretty close to how I felt struggling through this movie.

I have to give the movie some credit for the sheer ambitiousness of its story—it sets its sights on the meaning of life and death, a gutsy, divisive topic no matter who you are—but it's one thing to set goals, and quite another to reach them.  It's Such a Beautiful Day falls well short of making the life-changing rumination on death that Hertzfeldt was no doubt aiming for.

RECAP: It’s Such a Beautiful Day has several effective moments of pure emotion, but it doesn’t take long for an awkwardly unfunny joke or unnecessarily overlong scene to come along and completely derail the momentum. The film’s over-the-top bleak tone, in which we are pummeled with ruminations on death, as well as the overall pointlessness of life, wears thin after a little while; considering such reflection is essentially the entire point of the movie, it lost me well before the halfway mark. This combination has worked for many—its wildly well reviewed from audiences and critics alike—but it left me wanting a whole lot more.

RATING: 5/10

TRAILER