It's Such a Beautiful Day (Don Hertzfeldt) [71 points / 7 votes]
"It's hard to know where to begin when discussing Don Hertzfeldt's first feature, It’s Such a Beautiful Day. The temptation is to start with its production, whereby Hertzfeldt more or less made the whole thing himself, serving as director, writer, producer, animator, narrator, cinematographer, sound recordist and mixer, music supervisor, and even distributor. Then there's the long journey the film has taken to reach its finished form -- originally intended as a trilogy of short films, Hertzfeldt finished the first third of the movie in 2006 and the second in 2008, and only decided to combine them into a feature this past year after completing the third installment.
But then I keep coming back to something written by online critic and fellow Muriels voter Peter Labuza: "this film made me feel ALL THE FEELINGS." Honestly, I don't think I can put it better than that, though that won't stop a damn fool like me from trying.
I still remember vividly my first experience watching It’s Such a Beautiful Day in its earliest incarnation, back when it was called Everything Will Be OK. While Hertzfeldt's trademark stick-figure animation style was familiar to me from his earlier works, the tone felt altogether different. In telling the story of Bill -- an everyman hero perfectly suited to his minimalist design -- Hertzfeldt largely downplayed the absurdist comedy of Billy’s Balloon and Rejected in favor of close observation and anecdotal, almost Carver-esque storytelling. True, the final scene of Rejected and most of The Meaning of Life hinted at this more serious direction, but the depths he was plumbing with this latest work were unexpected, not to mention invigorating. As I told someone just after I saw it, "I'm almost scared to see what he'll do next."
Eventually, with the releases of chapter 2 (I Am So Proud of You!) and chapter 3, it became apparent that there was more to Bill's story, and that Hertzfeldt wouldn't go about telling it in a conventional manner. Rather than picking up where the first chapter leaves off, I Am So Proud of You! delves into Bill's past- or at least a fever-dream version of it fueled to some extent by the mental damage we first saw in chapter 1. Bill recalls his family history as one of physical and psychological hardship, disability and insanity, and an unfortunate tendency to be hit by trains.
Of the three sections of It’s Such a Beautiful Day, chapter 2 is the one that's most prone to Hertzfeldt's brand of gallows humor, which has become a sticking point for some critics. However, it also contains it share of poetic moments, including a long static shot of a man using a leaf blower that Hertzfeldt contrasts to the reality of Bill's life, which is nearing its end. I Am So Proud of You! finds Bill coming to terms with death -- both the one that awaits him and the deaths of those who've come before.
If chapter 2 deals with Bill's past, so the final chapter is about his future, as he (and we) contemplate what exactly that means. Having followed Bill this far, Hertzfeldt feels conflicted about where he should end his story, and this conflict is at the center of the final chapter of It’s Such a Beautiful Day. On the one hand, a story like Bill’s practically demands closure; on the other, when that closure involves killing off your hero, it can be hard to pull the (metaphorical) trigger. The way Hertzfeldt resolves the conflict is brilliant- --if you haven't seen the film, I won't spoil it for you here, except to say that It’s Such a Beautiful Day contains the best use of the long-tail ending since Spike Lee’s 25th Hour a decade ago, and one that's every bit as emotionally draining.
In the end, what sticks with me is the breadth of emotions -- ALL THE FEELINGS, in the words of Mr. Labuza -- summoned up by Hertzfeldt's masterpiece. It’s Such a Beautiful Day runs the gamut: sick-humor gags like Bill's retch-inducting supermarket observations, images of simple beauty such as a single flower sprouting from a poor man's shallow grave, bits of horrifying cinema like the much-ballyhooed "the pipe is leaking" sequence, deeply sad scenes like Bill's flash-forward (or is it just another hallucination?) to his last words. And while some would search for influences for Hertzfeldt's work -- It’s Such a Beautiful Day’s juxtaposition of the personal and the cosmic calls to mind Terrence Malick, for one -- it's also clear that Hertzfeldt, forever plugging away at his animating table (he once told the A.V. Club, “I feel stupid when I’m not in production on something”), is in a league of his own. Once again, I'm almost scared of what he'll do next. And I can't wait to find out what exactly that will be." - Paul Clark
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