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Groundhog Day
Feb. 1st, 2014 09:53 pmI worked on Paperman, I love Paperman, but my all-time hands-down full-stop favourite animated short film is Wild Life. If you haven't seen it already, please do so now, so the rest of this entry doesn't spoil you. It's thirteen minutes and change; watch it in the dark with headphones or good speakers, if you can.
I'm pretty sure the filmmakers weren't aware of it at the time, but they made it just for me. I felt this when I first saw it, and I felt this whenever I watched it with my lights out at lunch at Disney, or on my laptop late at night at home, or on my iPod on a windy autumn night on the Canadian prairie when I was up in Edmonton for my grandmother's funeral. I had thought it was on account of the polar parallels, identifying and perfectly portraying iconic Alberta imagery and atmosphere, and just being so darn Canadian in ways both trivial and profound, but recently I discovered the thoughtfulness extended to embedding a significant detail that has passed under my radar for years. Toward the end of the short, the protagonist writes a letter home, which is delivered in voiceover before it's revealed onscreen:
Tradition has it that if February 2nd is cloudy, spring is on its way, but if the sun shines, there will be six more weeks of winter. Americans have added a groundhog and its shadow to this superstition, but it seems to date back through Candlemas to Imbolc in pagan Europe. If the end of the film took place on the evening of February 2nd, the day on which E.T.W. wrote the letter, then the starry sky indicates it was a clear day, and the implications thereof may have influenced his actions.
I LOVE IT WHEN FILMMAKERS THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING. And even more when they don't make a big deal of it, just leave it there for you to pick up, even if it takes you a while.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch it again. I may be some time.
I'm pretty sure the filmmakers weren't aware of it at the time, but they made it just for me. I felt this when I first saw it, and I felt this whenever I watched it with my lights out at lunch at Disney, or on my laptop late at night at home, or on my iPod on a windy autumn night on the Canadian prairie when I was up in Edmonton for my grandmother's funeral. I had thought it was on account of the polar parallels, identifying and perfectly portraying iconic Alberta imagery and atmosphere, and just being so darn Canadian in ways both trivial and profound, but recently I discovered the thoughtfulness extended to embedding a significant detail that has passed under my radar for years. Toward the end of the short, the protagonist writes a letter home, which is delivered in voiceover before it's revealed onscreen:
Tradition has it that if February 2nd is cloudy, spring is on its way, but if the sun shines, there will be six more weeks of winter. Americans have added a groundhog and its shadow to this superstition, but it seems to date back through Candlemas to Imbolc in pagan Europe. If the end of the film took place on the evening of February 2nd, the day on which E.T.W. wrote the letter, then the starry sky indicates it was a clear day, and the implications thereof may have influenced his actions.
I LOVE IT WHEN FILMMAKERS THINK ABOUT WHAT THEY ARE DOING. And even more when they don't make a big deal of it, just leave it there for you to pick up, even if it takes you a while.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to watch it again. I may be some time.
