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, the three chapters were combined and released as a new feature film.
The film received widespread critical acclaim, with its experimental storytelling and surrealistic elements in animation being singled out for praise.[2][3] Many critics listed the feature film release as one of the best films of 2012. Since then, It's Such a Beautiful Day has been widely regarded by critics as one of the best animated films of all time.[4][5][6]
Plot
Bill is a man whose daily routines, perceptions, and dreams are illustrated onscreen through multiple split-screen windows, which are in turn narrated (by Don Hertzfeldt, uncredited). Bill suffers from an unnamed illness which interferes with his seemingly mundane and uneventful life. Bill often has meetings with his ex-girlfriend and when he visits his doctor, the doctor informs him that his illness is getting worse, and as the days pass, Bill's hallucinations and thoughts grow worse until he has a hallucinogenic mental breakdown and passes out in an alley.
To help him recuperate, Bill's mother comes to take care of him, but Bill mistakenly attacks her after briefly thinking she is about to kill 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 following day.
The film flashes back to Bill's childhood, with the Narrator explaining the death of Bill's half-brother Randall, who ran into the sea as a child while chasing a bird. 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 details the surreal 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." After the funeral, Bill finds a notebook where his mother practiced writing love notes to send to Bill when he was young. Afterwards, he 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. 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. His 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.
Realizing that Bill may die there, the Narrator instead describes an outcome where 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 theatrically as three animated short films.
The first installment, Everything Will Be OK, was released 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".[7] 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."[8][9]The Boston Globe called the film a "masterpiece" with the Boston Phoenix declaring Hertzfeldt a "genius."[9] The short film was a cover story on the Chicago Reader, receiving four stars from critic J.R. Jones.[10]
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.[11]
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.[12]
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.[13]
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.[14]
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."[15] Chris Robinson, author and director of the Ottawa International Animation Festival, described I Am So Proud of You as "a masterpiece."[16]
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.[17]
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.[18]
In 2011 and 2012, Hertzfeldt again toured the United States and Canada to support the final chapter in another "Evening with Don Hertzfeldt" program.[19] 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 limited theatrical release in 2012. It was nominated for Best Animated Feature Film by the Los Angeles Film Critics Association.[20]
It subsequently became available on DVD,[20] Vimeo On-Demand,[21]iTunes,[21] and streamed for a two-year period on Netflix.
In 2015, the film was remastered and released on Blu-ray.[22] In 2021, the film was released on the Criterion Channel.
Re-release
In 2024, It's Such a Beautiful Day was rereleased to theaters for the first time since 2012, paired with the release of Don Hertzfeldt's newest animated short film, ME.[23]
Reception and legacy
Hertzfeldt (pictured in 2015) received critical acclaim for his debut.
It's Such a Beautiful Day received widespread critical acclaim, and it's regarded as one of the best films of 2012 and among the best animated films of the 21st century. Review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of perfect 100% based on 33 reviews, with an average rating of 8.4/10. The website's critical consensus reads: "It's Such a Beautiful Day is an impossibly dense and affecting piece of animated art."[24]Metacritic gives the film a weighted average rating of 90 out of 100, based on reviews from 7 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[25]
Upon its original release, the Los Angeles Film Critics Association voted it runner-up for Best Animated Feature Film of the year, behind Frankenweenie.[2]IndieWire ranked Hertzfeldt the 9th best Film Director of the Year in its annual poll (tied with Wes Anderson),[1][26] and film critics for The A.V. Club ranked the film #8 on their list of the Best Films of 2012.[27]Slate named It's Such a Beautiful Day their pick for Best Animated Feature Film of 2012.[20]
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."[4]
In 2016, The Film Stage critics ranked the film #1 on their list of the "Best Animated Films of the 21st Century (So Far)."[28] That same year, three critics polled by the BBC named It's Such a Beautiful Day one of the greatest films made since 2000.[29]
In 2019, The Wrap named It's Such a Beautiful Day the #1 "Best Animated Film of the 2010s."[30] The Vulture film critics also ranked it #12 on their overall list of the "Best Movies of the Decade.".[31] In 2021, IGN's CineFix gave it the #1 spot on their "Top 10 Animated Films of All Time" list.[5]
Steven Pate of The Chicagoist wrote of the film, "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."[32]
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."[33] Paul Bradshaw of Total Film called it "An existential flip book and a heartbreaking black joke: stickmen have never looked so alive."[34] Glenn Heath Jr. of Little White Lies gave it a score of 5 out of 5 and called it "One of the great films about memory, perspective, and past history."[35]
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