冬の日/ Fuyu no Hi/ Winter Days

The idea behind Fuyu no Hi is a very clever one, and it is one of two things that draw an arthouse audience to this short animated film – to see how that concept can be executed. The other is, of course, the big names involved, bringing together some giants of worldwide animation.

In 1684, history’s most prominent writer of Haiku, Bashou, put together a collection of poems called Fuyu no Hi. One of the poems was a renka, a collaborative work: in this case, six poets took turns to write single lines, each relating to the one before in sometimes extremely subtle ways. To reflect this, Fuyu no Hi’s director (actually working more as a producer, I would assume), the puppeteer Kawamoto Kihachirou, assembled 35 animators, each to take a stanza and make a short clip of animation based upon it. Kawamoto himself alone produces two segments.

The real draw for me was Yuri Norstein, this being his first true release since Tale of Tales. It is clear that he is held in extremely high regard here, not only with the longest segment, but opening the piece and, apparently, noted as a ‘special guest’. And it must be said that his presence is the focal point of the whole, not only providing the best of the animations, an uncharacteristically sprightly and coherent 110 seconds, but his wolf and hedgehog characters also appearing later in another animator’s piece – albeit one about a ‘spiteful’ arrow. It also means that early on, a high standard is set that unfortunately is not met by the majority of the animators who follow.

While the variations of tone are part of what make a renka what it is, and it is perfectly correct to feature funnier animations alongside more serious efforts, too often these are incongruous and seem to have little to do with their source. On the other hand several contributors, including most of the non-Japanese animators, try to follow the lines of the poem so literally it becomes unintentionally hilarious.

It’s very difficult to pitch. Too vague or experimental and there seems to be no emotional link with the source. Even Takahata Isao, my preferred Ghibli lead director and extremely capable animator, does not manage to hit the right notes. Too simplistic and there is little impact at all, which surprising affected Yamamura Kouji, who directed the ultra-weird Franz Kafka’s A Country Doctor. And trying to subvert the poeticism with simplicity or puerile humour…well, that’s what made the UK’s contribution something of an embarrassment.

Just once or twice, this compilation, this mash-up, this mix-tape is note-perfect. But I have to wonder what, given more thought, more time, more communication and more emphasis on the original poetry, this could have been.

Yuri Norstein’s Сказка сказок & Ёжик в тумане / Tale of Tales and The Hedgehog in the Fog

Yuri Norstein is a giant of animation, and so seminal are Tale of Tales and The Hedgehog in the Fog that quite frankly I am ashamed of never having seen them until last year. Today, I rewatched The Hedgehog in the Fog and remembered just how brilliant it was. Indeed, 29 years since his last animated release (not counting his 2-minute segment of the Winter Days project), I feel it’s high time he got a move on with The Overcoat...

All jokes aside, as I’ve mentioned before, I regard it as a shame that so many fans of animation are tribal and tend not to stray beyond their devotion to, for example, Disney or anime. On the other hand, once one is aware of Norstein’s work, his stature becomes more obvious. Along with Paul Grimault, Miyazaki Hayao has cited Norstein as a great influence, international polls often put these two titles at the top of ‘best animation of all time’ lists and the wolf from Tale of Tales even cameos in an episode of Sayonara Zetsubou-Sensei.

Norstein’s animations are grim, almost devoid of colour but complex to look at, and are capable of that kind of empty, plaintive storytelling that to the viewer seems profound and beautiful. While Tale of Tales is the more serious, weighty and symbolic of the two, my personal preference is for the coherence and simple storytelling of The Hedgehog in the Fog, which creates its strange atmosphere through direction and art rather than disconnected segments. The latter’s story follows a little hedgehog who, concerned about a horse, goes into a frog, is startled by various encounters in the strange world there, but is ultimately aided by weird but good-hearted creatures and is reunited with his friend the bear cub, whose voice actor delivers one of the best performances I’ve ever heard in no more than a handful of lines. Tale of Tales, conversely, makes a degree of sense following the little wolf, but otherwise it is mostly strange snatches of skipping bulls, apples and soldiers. Both, rather like poems, can bring strong emotions with just the slightest impressions, but I find elements of the lack of story and bizarre imagery to be overly simplistic and without symbolic power, rather than the other way around. I have never been keen on images which may mean numerous profound things, because it is equally probable, if not more so, that they mean nothing at all. This is likely because I put more emphasis on the storyteller’s intentions than my subjective interpretation.

But it is undoubtedly the uncanny mood of Norstein’s cut-out animation, moving between several layers of glass with different textures upon them, that makes him so prominent. Take the exact soundtrack and storyboard and animate in Disney’s style and see if you get the same impact. Norstein is a master of mood, of his own strange aesthetic, and of pitching animation to be both cute and unsettling. And these are no small feats. Essential viewing.