The film tells the story of a character named Bill, who struggles with memory loss and surreal visions, among other symptoms of an unknown neurological problem. The film employs both offbeat humor and serious philosophical musings. The film mostly consists of stick figures, with stylized footage from the real world appearing in many "split screen" windows, photographed through multiple exposures. Hertzfeldt serves as the film's uncredited narrator.
The film is divided into three chapters, all of which were originally released in theaters as animated short films. The first part, Everything Will Be OK, was released in 2006 and received the Grand Prize at the Sundance Film Festival. The second short, I Am So Proud of You, was released in 2008, and the titular third film, It's Such a Beautiful Day, was released in 2011. The three short films received over 90 film festival awards upon their original releases.[1] In 2012, Hertzfeldt seamlessly edited all three chapters together and it was released as a new feature film.
Many film critics listed the feature film version as one of the best films of 2012, and the L.A. Film Critics Association named it runner-up for Best Animated Film of the year.[2] Since then, It's Such a Beautiful Day has appeared on several film critics' "Best Of" lists, including #1 on the Film Stage's list of "The 50 Best Animated Films of the 21st Century Thus Far", #1 on The Wrap's list of the "Best Animated Films of the 2010s", and #1 on IGN's list of the "Top 10 Animated Films of All Time".[2]
Plot
Bill is a young man whose daily routines, perceptions, and dreams are illustrated onscreen through multiple split-screen windows, which are in turn narrated (by Don Hertzfeldt). Bill suffers from an unnamed illness which interferes with his seemingly mundane life. Bill often has meetings with his ex-girlfriend and had been recently referred to a clinic for his condition. He begins to have intense hallucinations, falling deeper into his illness.
To help him recuperate, Bill's mother comes to take care of him. Bill is then taken to a hospital, where his health fluctuates, confusing his doctor. Bill's doctor concludes that Bill will not die, surprising and inconveniencing his relatives. Bill then goes back to work.
The film flashes back to Bill's childhood, with the Narrator explaining the death of Bill's half-brother Randall, who disappeared into the sea as a child. After Randall's death, Bill's mother soon became fiercely protective of Bill and rarely left home, eventually causing Bill's stepfather to leave. The Narrator also details the history of Bill's family, many of whom suffered from mental illness and died in unpleasant ways.
A few days after leaving the hospital, Bill receives a call telling him that his mother had died in a "fit of senile hysterics." Bill sees his doctor again, unexpectedly finding nothing wrong with him. On his way to lunch, Bill suffers a seizure and collapses. During the seizure, various memories of his infancy and childhood flash before him. Bill is again taken to the hospital, where his ex-girlfriend frequently visits him. Bill's new doctor questions him, revealing that Bill cannot remember basic information about his life. Bill has a brain exam, after which he is asked various questions and shown photographs that appear irregular or nonsensical.
Bill's doctor explains that Bill is having trouble understanding past tense and present tense, and it is implied that many of his childhood memories and family history could have been confabulated. Bill is allowed to go home for family care but, when he arrives home, no one is there to take care of him. He starts to repeat and then forget various tasks, such as buying food and taking walks, and he does not seem to understand that he is ill. Bill's doctor eventually explains that he doesn't have long to live.
Bill's outlook on life starkly changes, and he notices more of life's small details. This change is complemented by a change in the film's animation: full-color photography is merged into the scenery. Bill rents a car and drives to his childhood home on instinct. His uncle gives him an address to a nursing home, where Bill can find his real father, whom he has not seen since childhood. After spending time with his father, Bill forgives him, and then leaves to continue driving. Feeling his health deteriorating further, Bill stops to lie underneath a tree, and the screen cuts to black.
The Narrator realizes that Bill may die there and refuses to believe that he will. Instead, Bill becomes immortal and goes on to accomplish many wonderful achievements. He then outlives the human race and the earth's future inhabitants, surviving until the slow death of the universe, watching the stars blink out one at a time.
Production
Six years in the making, the completed picture was captured entirely in camera on a 35mm rostrum animation stand. Built in the 1940s and used by Hertzfeldt on every project since 1999, it was one of the last surviving cameras of its kind still operating worldwide. The picture blended traditional hand-drawn animation, experimental optical effects, trick photography, and digital hybrids that were printed for photography, one frame at a time.[2]
The film's signature "split screen" effect was achieved by framing the drawn animation through tiny holes placed beneath the camera lens during photography, with each element in the film frame individually composited through careful multiple exposures.[2]
Towards the end of production of the final chapter, the old camera's motor began to fail. It could no longer advance the film properly, riddling the final reels with unintentional light leaks.[2]
Release
The three chapters of the film were originally produced and released as three animated short films, photographed entirely on 35mm film with in-camera special effects. The three short films were edited together and re-released for the first time as the full-length It's Such a Beautiful Day in 2012.
The first installment, Everything Will Be OK, was released theatrically in 2006 and won the 2007 Sundance Film Festival Grand Prize for Short Film. Despite the film's short running length, Variety film critic Robert Koehler named Everything Will Be OK one of the "Best Films of 2007".[3] The film was extremely well received by critics, describing it as "essential viewing" and, "simply one of the finest shorts produced over the past few years, be it animated or not."[4][5] The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius."[6] The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones.
Everything Will Be OK advanced to the final round of voting for Best Animated Short Film at the 2007 Academy Awards, but did not make the final list of five nominees.[7]
Outside of theaters, Everything Will Be OK was first released as a limited edition DVD "single" in 2007. The DVD featured an extensive "archive" of over 100 pages of deleted scenes, Don's production notes, sketches, and layouts, as well as a hidden Easter egg that plays an alternate, narration-free version of the film to highlight the sound design.[8]
The second installment, I Am So Proud of You, was released theatrically in 2008. It continued the dark and philosophical humor of the first film, seeing Bill's recovery haunted by the apparently genetic inevitability of his mental illness, the lack of control over his own fate, and the sudden death of a loved one. The short suggests "simultaneous" connections throughout time, through his strange family history, his childhood, the present, and his old age.
For the first time, Hertzfeldt embarked on a solo tour with the film, presenting a special "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" program in multiple cities.[9]
I Am So Proud of You received similar critical praise and received 27 film festival awards, including the Grand Jury Prize at the Florida Film Festival and the Golden Starfish at the Hamptons Film Festival.[10]
Director David Lowery wrote, "I Am So Proud Of You is, I think, as good a pick as any for film of the year... full of grand and complex thoughts about life and death and bodily fluids and years rapidly advancing, coming to ends and beginnings, back and forth, over and over, until one slips indistinguishably into the next."[11] Chris Robinson, author and director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival described I Am So Proud of You as "a masterpiece."[12]
Following its theatrical release, a DVD "single" of I Am So Proud of You was released in August 2009, featuring another extensive "archive" of production materials.[13]
The final chapter of the trilogy, It's Such a Beautiful Day, was released in 2011, winning several awards, including a Special Jury Prize from the Hiroshima Animation Festival.[14]
In 2011 and 2012, Hertzfeldt again toured the United States and Canada to support the final chapter in another "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" program.[15] While this theatrical program presented all three of the short films together for the first time, it still presented them as individual shorts, not yet as a unified feature film.
The final, unified feature film version, It's Such a Beautiful Day, shared the same title as the third short film and had a more limited theatrical release in 2012. It was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.[16] It later became available on DVD,[16]Vimeo On-Demand,[17]iTunes,[17] and streamed for a two-year period on Netflix.
In 2015, a Blu-ray of the remastered, feature-length version of It's Such a Beautiful Day was released.[18] In 2021, the film was released on the Criterion Channel. As of 2024,[ref]It's Such a Beautiful Day is also available to stream on-demand on Vimeo.[2]
Reception and legacy
Critical response
It's Such a Beautiful Day was acclaimed by film critics. On review aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 100% based on 32 reviews, with an average rating of 8.5/10. The website's critical consensus reads, "A collection of three shorts by Don Hertzfeldt, It's Such a Beautiful Day is an impossibly dense and affecting piece of animated art."[19] On Metacritic the film has a weighted average score of 90 out of 100, based on 7 reviews, indicating "universal acclaim".[20]
Steven Pate of The Chicagoist wrote of the trilogy, "There is a moment in each installment of Don Hertzfeldt's masterful trilogy of animated shorts where you feel something in your chest. It's an unmistakably cardiac event that great art can elicit when something profound and undeniably true is conveyed about the human condition. That's when you say to yourself: are stick figures supposed to make me feel this way? In the hands of a master, yes. And Hertzfeldt is to stick figures what Franz Liszt was to planks of ebony and ivory and what Ted Williams was to a stick of white ash: someone so transcendentally expert that to describe what they do in literal terms is borderline demeaning."[21]
Mike McCahill of The Guardian called it "Funny, oddly affecting and cherishably personal: in a better world, this would be on 300 screens, and filler such as The Croods would have to be smuggled in under the radar."[22] Paul Bradshaw of Total Film called it "An existential flip book and a heartbreaking black joke: stickmen have never looked so alive."[23] Glenn Heath Jr. of Little White Lies gave it 5 out of 5 and called it "One of the great films about memory, perspective, and past history."[24]
Accolades
The Los Angeles Film Critics Association named it their runner-up for Best Animated Feature Film of the year, behind Frankenweenie.[25] Indiewire ranked Hertzfeldt the 9th best Film Director of the Year in its annual poll (tied with Wes Anderson),[26][27] and film critics for The A.V. Club ranked the film #8 on their list of the Best Films of 2012.[28] Slate Magazine named It's Such a Beautiful Day their pick for Best Animated Feature Film of 2012.[16]
In the United Kingdom, the film was ranked #3 on Time Out London's list of the 10 Best Films of 2013 and #4 on The London Film Review's list of the same. In 2014, Time Out ranked It's Such a Beautiful Day #16 on their list of the "100 Best Animated Movies Ever Made." Critic Tom Huddleston described it as "one of the great outsider artworks of the modern era, at once sympathetic and shocking, beautiful and horrifying, angry and hilarious, uplifting and almost unbearably sad."[29]
In 2016, The Film Stage critics ranked the film #1 on their list of the "Best Animated Films of the 21st Century (So Far)."[30] That same year, three critics polled by the BBC named It's Such a Beautiful Day one of the greatest films made since 2000.[31] In 2019, The Wrap named It's Such a Beautiful Day the #1 "Best Animated Film of the 2010s."[32] The Vulture film critics also ranked it #12 on their overall list of the "Best Movies of the Decade."[33]. In 2021, IGN's CineFix gave it the #1 spot on their "Top 10 Animated Films of All Time" list.[34]
Related Research Articles
The term independent animation refers to animated shorts, web series, and feature films produced outside a major national animation industry.
Shark Tale is a 2004 American animated comedy film from DreamWorks. The film was directed by Vicky Jenson, Bibo Bergeron, and Rob Letterman, from a screenplay written by Letterman and Michael J. Wilson. The film features an ensemble cast that includes the voices of Will Smith, Robert De Niro, Renée Zellweger, Jack Black, Angelina Jolie, and Martin Scorsese. It tells the story of an underachieving fish named Oscar (Smith) who falsely claims to have killed the son of a shark mob boss Don Lino in an attempt to advance his community standing. Oscar teams up with the mobster's younger son Lenny (Black) to keep up the facade.
Ah, L'Amour (1995) is Don Hertzfeldt's first 16mm student animated short film, completed at the age of 18 at UC Santa Barbara. Though produced for a beginning film class and never meant to be exhibited, the short had a long life at animation festivals, launching Hertzfeldt into cult status at a young age. In 1998, the short won the Grand Prize Award for "World's Funniest Cartoon" from the HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival.
Bill Plympton is an American animator, graphic designer, cartoonist, and filmmaker best known for his 1987 Academy Award–nominated animated short Your Face and his series of shorts featuring a dog character starting with 2004's Guard Dog.
The Animation Show is a touring festival of animated short films that was first held in fall 2003. It was sponsored by MTV, and was created by award-winning animators Mike Judge and Don Hertzfeldt. Due to its association with MTV, the showcase was not intended for children, as the festival was more aimed at adult audiences, with its main kid-friendly equivalent being Nickelodeon's Nicktoons Film Festival, presented by Frederator Studios.
Rejected is a 2000 animated surrealist short comedy film directed by Don Hertzfeldt that was released in 2000. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Animated Short Film the following year at the 73rd Academy Awards, and received 27 awards from film festivals around the world.
Billy's Balloon is a 16 mm animated short by Don Hertzfeldt. It was his fourth and final student film at UC Santa Barbara. Similar to his other cartoons, he uses a minimalist stick-figure technique.
The Annie Awards are accolades which the Los Angeles branch of the International Animated Film Association, ASIFA-Hollywood, has presented each year since 1972 to recognize excellence in animation shown in American cinema and television. Originally designed to celebrate lifetime or career contributions to animation, the award has been given to individual works since 1992.
Cartoon Sushi is an adult-animated showcase program that aired on MTV from 1997 to 1998. It was developed by Eric Calderon and produced by Nick Litwinko, and was the successor to Liquid Television. The title screen opening was illustrated by Ed, Edd n Eddy creator Danny Antonucci. Each episode featured internationally produced cartoons, along with some original material created for the show.
The International Tournée of Animation was an annual touring program of animated films that started in 1965 as The First Festival of Animated Film with each selected and assembled from films from many countries around the world and which existed from the 1970s to the 1980s-90s.
Genre is a 1996 animated meta-comedy short film by animator Don Hertzfeldt, his second 16mm student film, produced at the age of 19.
The Meaning of Life is a 35mm animated short film, written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt in 2005. The twelve-minute film is the result of almost four years of production and tens of thousands of drawings, single-handedly paper animated and photographed by Hertzfeldt.
The Pebble and the Penguin is a 1995 American independent musical-comedy-adventure film animated film directed by Don Bluth and Gary Goldman. The film stars the voices of Martin Short, Jim Belushi, Tim Curry, and Annie Golden. Based on the true life mating rituals of the Adélie penguins in Antarctica, the film focuses on a timid, stuttering penguin named Hubie who tries to impress a beautiful penguin named Marina by giving her a pebble that fell from the sky and keep her from the clutches of an evil penguin named Drake who wants Marina for himself.
Rise of the Guardians is a 2012 American animated fantasy action-adventure film produced by DreamWorks Animation and distributed by Paramount Pictures. The film was directed by Peter Ramsey from a screenplay by David Lindsay-Abaire, based on the book series The Guardians of Childhood and the short film The Man in the Moon by William Joyce. It stars the voices of Chris Pine, Alec Baldwin, Jude Law, Isla Fisher, and Hugh Jackman. The film tells a story about Guardians Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, and the Sandman, who enlist Jack Frost to stop the evil Pitch Black from engulfing the world in darkness in a fight of dreams.
Shane Richard Acker is an American animator, film director, screenwriter and animation teacher known for directing 9, which is based on his 2005 Academy Award-nominated short film of the same title. He is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles.
Don Hertzfeldt is an American animator, writer, and independent filmmaker. He is a two-time Academy Award nominee who is best known for the animated films It's Such a Beautiful Day, the World of Tomorrow series, and Rejected. In 2014, his work appeared on The Simpsons. Eight of his short films have competed at the Sundance Film Festival, a festival record. He is also the only filmmaker to have won the Sundance Film Festival's Grand Jury Prize for Short Film twice.
The Red Turtle is a 2016 animated fantasy drama film directed by Dutch animator Michaël Dudok de Wit who co-wrote the film with French screenwriter Pascale Ferran. The film is an international co-production between Studio Ghibli and several French companies, including Wild Bunch and Belvision. The film, which has no dialogue, tells the story of a man who becomes shipwrecked on an uninhabited island and meets a giant red female turtle.
World of Tomorrow is an avant-garde animated science fiction short film series written, directed, produced, animated, and edited by Don Hertzfeldt. The series began with World of Tomorrow (2015), which was followed by World of Tomorrow Episode Two: The Burden of Other People's Thoughts (2017) and World of Tomorrow Episode Three: The Absent Destinations of David Prime (2020).
Ari Aster is an American filmmaker. Having garnered some initial recognition for the short film The Strange Thing About the Johnsons (2011), he became best known for writing and directing Hereditary (2018), Midsommar (2019), and Beau Is Afraid (2023), all of which were released by A24. His films have been noted for their unsettling combination of horror, dark comedy, and depictions of graphic violence. In 2018, he co-founded the production company Square Peg with Danish producer Lars Knudsen.
Arthouse animation is a combination of art film and animated film.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
