"You will only get older."

You have an hour to spare. I know you have an hour to spare. Please, please, PLEASE make this film that hour. It's one of the most amazing and gorgeous things I've ever seen. One of the most unbelievable and meaningful and important experiences that a human being can have with a work of cinema, and if you disagree with me, then I can only say that I respect your opinion but I'm also sorry that you didn't get out of this beauty what I got out of it. Right now, I feel the same way that I felt after watching Lilja 4-Ever the first time: completely, emotionally paralyzed... and also filled with joy for…

“You are forgiven.”

In the Man’s fortieth year, the braincloud overwhelmed him. It had always been there in one way or another, little grey puffs on his mind’s periphery. Diffuse misanthropy. Awkward social interactions. Strained interpersonal relations. Memories of things that may not have happened. Demons haunting the corners of his mind.

Now they were his mind. Animals clawing at his being. The smell of burning toast. The sound of waves crashing on a beach. His ex-girlfriend with the head of a wildebeest. The doctor read the Man many test results, full of long words and the most existentially insulting uses of “positive” imaginable. He did not know what it all meant, except that his days were numbered. But that…

99

I remember watching her. In particular, I remember watching her watch the road. She'd sit on the end of the couch at attention: distant, but alert to each car or passerby. The joys of life intersecting at one specific point in an endless sea of interactions - the street by my house was a portal to a final curtain-call, and a canvas for reflection. She'd say, "there, there, there he is!" I've been waiting for him to come home." It wasn't him. Her husband, and my grandfather, died ten-years prior. She clung to fabrics of memories drifting past, and he was always in them, and he was always the one coming home. Floating up to the front of the…

Wow. This is what I'm talking about.
A stick man in a bubble says more about us, life and our place in the world than hundreds of films combined.
A stick man.
In a bubble.

Don Hertzfeldt has a wonderful story to tell. It is a story full of insight into a man's struggle with remembering what it is about life that he is supposed to remember. The beauty? People? Faces? Dreams? He grasps at each of them but they fade away the closer he gets. And he feels lost. He can't remember where to go. He doesn't remember what to do. Everything is clear but everything is one tiny sound in a majestic symphony and he's not sure if…

Film #19 of Make me watch your favourite. Recommended by Dave Vis.

Bill.

Bill is made up out of a couple of lines drawn by a genius. Those lines, in all their simplicity, manage to capture the gravitas, beauty, pain, regrets, sorrow and joy that constitute life.

Bill is beautiful and Hertzfeldt is a genius.

I am completely and utterly amazed by this collection of three shorts that narrates the slow spiral towards oblivion of the most endearing and human stick figure you'll ever meet.

The scope and effectiveness of animation techniques Hertzfeldt uses is impressive and really enhances the way he manages to convey the dire situation Bill is in and the cascade of events that make up his…

I wonder how he thought of this in these terms. I do not suffer from any similar mental illness to the one depicted here, but what Hertzfeldt depicts fascinated me because it felt right. I have no frame of reference, but what he described seemed insightful, seemed like it might actually be an accurate representation of something so often mishandled in media. Because of this, the film comes across with empathy. I felt compelled to read about Hertzfeldt on Wikipedia to see if this was rooted in any aspect of his life (the Wikipedia entry did not say). This is a strange idea to get from a film in which hallucination is occasionally treated as a punchline, but the struggle…

I can’t put into words how much this movie means to me. I feel like each time I watch it, I gain a new perspective of what I think It’s Such a Beautiful Day attempts to communicate or how I feel it connects to me. It’s strange how only 62 minutes can feel like a lifetime. Hertzfeldt successfully creates the still disturbing horrors and overwhelmingly lush vivid beauties of life with very few words and pictures that feel nostalgic, warm and familiar.

The film itself follows an unreliable narrator, Bill, who’s awareness of his slipping life (due to a degrading mental illness) leads the audience into the shambles, disorientations and tricks of his brain. His justifications for what he can’t comprehend…