Bill goes to the bus stop, and in the distance he sees a person he knows. But he gets nervous and mixes two sentences to greet her. They will never see each other again. This is how ‘It’s such a beautiful day’ begins, an animated film with its own style that some people can mistakenly mistake for a lack of talent or budget. Don Hertzfeldt has shown over the years that he is one of the brightest minds in the world of cinema today., both with this debut feature and with his fabulous series ‘World of tomorrow’. If you still don’t know this unique narrator, reading this review will discover an author capable of moving you inside… with some stick figures.
I forgive you
Originally, ‘It’s such a beautiful day’ was a short film, ‘Everything will be OK’, but, in the same way that he did with ‘World of tomorrow’, Hertzfeldt released three that completed the saga from 2006 to 2011 that ended up becoming a constant evolution, a flight forward on the mental, psychological problems and the cognitive deterioration of a person destined to die. Or live forever, who knows. See the world, in any case, from another overwhelming perspective, a unique tone that you will not find in any other work.
Because ‘It’s such a beautiful day’ is ultimately a film about waiting for death and embracing the life we have lefteven if we can’t fully understand it. The existentialism that exudes from every minute is exhausting: there is so much to try to apprehend, that you don’t even see coming how, from the other side, the tape is preparing a new way to hit you in the stomach.
How long has Bill been in the hospital bed? Who are these people he doesn’t know watching over him while he is dying? Who did he just say “I forgive you” to and why is he crying? The visual experiment that completely breaks with any attempt at traditional narrative is the only way in which a story like this can be told, in which the course is set by extreme cognitive decline mixed with depressing (but real) life lessons.
I’ll only get older
Few things can be defined as “author cinema” as much as ‘It’s such a beautiful day’: Hertzfeldt is its director, screenwriter, producer and main dubber. An authentic tour de force in which getting carried away is not as easy as it seems: the editing of the film takes you through wild places, impossible twists and turns, does a thousand capers that do not allow the viewer to relax. It is not the intention, of course. By challenging the concept of the narrative itself we enter directly into the world of ideas.
There is a common thread, but the most interesting thing in Bill’s story is not what happens to him, but how it happens to him, how we can see the world through their eyes and a small brain in a continuous state of change and deconstruction. To watch this film is to enter for an hour in a world where logic only partly fits before descending into hell where it is impossible to follow the rhythm of your own story, faces are just blurs, the world is a stranger to you and you just want to dream of an eternal life beyond all that will be known.
It is true that the first short of ‘It’s such a beautiful day’ It starts off so strong that it never quite measures up again., but it’s not a problem: Hertzfeldt’s lazy half hour has more cinema, innovation and surprise than most films by great filmmakers. The only reason this creator isn’t better known is due to social rejection and prejudices towards animationbecause he is actually one of the best storytellers of our times.
He wondered if this was really his life.
I know it seems weird, and I’m exaggerating. How is all this going to make you feel an animation made with stick figures? And yet, when Bill is in the hospital bed and his ex-girlfriend goes to check on him while someone else stares at the curtain, you feel something snap inside you. Something that had already been broken moments before, and that thanks to the very dark sense of humor of the film is put back together. And that is the game that the director proposes to you: I am going to break you, I am going to rearm you, I am going to break you again, and at a given moment you will realize that you are suffering from a stick doll.
‘It’s such a beautiful day’ It is a complex work, full of content, feelings, sensations, humor and pain. in which it is difficult to follow the thread, but even in that mental restlessness it is worth it: its barely sixty minutes are exhausting and take you to the extreme. The film puts you in the point of view of a person who loses his memory and mixes past, present and future as if in a discontinuous existence, but he completely rejects cheap sentimentality. In its place, a layer of humor darker than coffee, of urban reality and narrative experimentation that gives it a touch as special as unique.
The good news is that, in addition to this marvel, you can see ‘World of tomorrow’ on Filmin and marvel at one of the greatest existentialist sci-fi stories of all time. We have before us an author who is capable of changing the narrative of the 21st century and we are not giving him the necessary importance. ‘It’s such a beautiful day’ is not only recommended despite his mistakes: It is, frankly, necessary.