Movie Forums Top 100 of the 2010s - Group Watch

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I thought a short film might be nice coming off of the holiday weekend.

I really love The Burden and have watched it many times. I'll write something up for it in a little bit after I give it a watch.



I just watched The Burden. This was interesting and creative. I really liked the animation and character design. Good nomination.



Well, I like the look of it anyway.



The Burden (Min börda) (Niki Lindroth von Bahr, 2017)

I'm really not sure how to rate or review this one because there's so little to it in terms of story. I do really love the overall look of the film and at only like 13 minutes I certainly never got bored, but I did find some of the characters a little creepy looking (especially the monkeys, but I find monkeys kind of creepy in general) and I struggled with the musical aspect of it. These issues of course are really my issues and not the film's, but they did hinder my enjoyment of it just the same.






The Burden, 2017

In a strange, dark metropolis, various animals sing out their inner emotions.

This movie is only 14 minutes long, yet I find it foreboding, funny, sad, touching, and I like the music.

I first watched this film when it was added to the Criterion Collection. It made me laugh in the first minute when a fish in a hotel sings the lines "Nobody wants to be with me/ I don't know why./ Or actually I do know why./ I have bad skin." Then moments later, "It wasn't anything anyone said, I just read between the lines and then I made up my mind."

I love everything about this film. I LOVE the craft of it. The tiny maps in the hotel, the newspaper the fish is holding. The little logos on the clothing. It is so meticulous and if you zoom your attention in on any corner of the screen, you are rewarded with some little detail.

I love that the film repeatedly takes us to the kind of places that just make you feel alone, especially after the sun has gone down: a hotel hallway, an empty cafeteria, a cubicle-laden workplace, a supermarket at night.

I do find it funny when you get musical numbers about mundane things, so the monkeys doing a big song and dance number about their telemarketing scam ("Interest free!") complete with spinning cubicles makes me laugh, especially as they chant their number one rule, "Say you're sorry, but never cancel the agreement."

At the heart of the silliness, though, is something kind of dark and sad. The camera pans between empty large parking lots, takes in the empty hotel hallway or grocery aisles. The sense of menace amps up in the grocery store sequence, as products fly off of the shelves and an ominous hole opens up in the floor.

The final song kind of gets me. "No sorrows, no troubles, when the burden is lifted from my shoulders." The song is given a gospel-like rhythm and upbeat pace, but it seems as if these depressed, isolated characters are just talking about dying, and the burden is just their everyday lives. Maybe that's a lot to read into some singing fish with synthesizer voices, but I find something very moving about a large group singing about their dreams and hopes yet not connecting with each other. As we pan out to see that they are in a bizarre, self-contained floating rock and those eerie horns take over the score, I kind of get shivers.

I think that short films are often overlooked when thinking about the best of a decade. (I nearly nominated It's Such a Beautiful Day which, at 62 minutes, just seems to fall onto the radar as a "feature film"). I always admire the economy of a good short film--what's that? I can watch it during the intermission of the hockey game?!-- and how well just a few minutes can be used to take me on an emotional journey.

I checked out several of Niki Lindroth von Bahr's shorts after watching this one. (I have yet to watch her segment of The House on Netflix because it keeps glitching out on me, but soon!). I quite like all of her stuff, with Bath House coming a close second to this one (and it has more of a straight-ahead narrative).

I have yet to even start to make my list, but The Burden will certainly be in consideration for me.




You can't make a rainbow without a little rain.
The Burden (2017) is a weird short, but not necessarily in a bad way. It's very imaginative, and it held my attention, even with the creepiness of the animals singing about strange things. It won't make my list, but I'm glad I watched it.
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Gave this a watch as it was nice and short (and available), liked the animation and attention to background detail and found the music strangely enjoyable (kinda hypnotic at times). One little niggle I did have was that the supermarket shelf-stacker's mouth was never animated for that segment though. All-in-all something I'd have been unlikely to have discovered on my own and an interesting watch that certainly kept my attention but not something I'd be likely to place on my ballot even if I did include shorts.



Just saw The Burden - the visuals are both adorable, fun and slightly creepy. I love the shop with all the small boxes of food. Storywise I´m just left with a kind of meh feeling. It´s like being told a story, I already know. That we are all disconnected and waiting for the burden to end. A nice watch and I would love to see more with that same visual style.



I just watched The Burden , and beyond the peppy moments, or the creepy animation at times (the scenes of the roads reminded me of Lynch's work), I was taken in by the sadness behind the lives of those creatures.

Maybe that's how I interpreted it, and others could have a different take, but to me it felt like how we are stuck in our unsatisfying lives with our wishes, and in the grander scheme of things it doesn't matter, as the earth (their flat hanging world) keeping going on.

Very interesting recommendation @Takoma11



Just finished The Burden, and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed the animation style, the attention to detail, and some of the songs (the last one, in particular). At 13 minutes, I think it neither overstayed its welcome, nor felt too brief. In regards to the themes, I enjoyed how the characters all appeared to be in the same boat of being stuck in their dull jobs/lives and wanting to escape from it, yet none of them seemed to have any means of doing so, nor did they seem to know how to communicate with each other. The shot of the animals drifting through space on a rock was a great way to end the film since it showed that there was likely no way for them to escape from their situations. Overall, it's a moving short, though it likely won't make my ballot (I often have difficulty with comparing short films to feature length films). Still though, good nomination.



I just fired up Discord again to see if the MoFo Server still works... it does

Might be worth a pop/inclusion if peeps are interested.
Lemme know and I can post a fresh link to the server



I just fired up Discord again to see if the MoFo Server still works... it does

Might be worth a pop/inclusion if peeps are interested.
Lemme know and I can post a fresh link to the server
I'd be interested in joining.



I'd be interested in joining.
Link to MoFo Discord:
https://discord.gg/2ZwSSDX9

If said links shuts off, lemme know and I can do a new one... I think there's a 7 day timer on links.



Link to MoFo Discord:
https://discord.gg/2ZwSSDX9

If said links shuts off, lemme know and I can do a new one... I think there's a 7 day timer on links.
Just joined. I didn't realize we had a Discord till now.



I watched The Burden, and if feeling melancholy was the aim, then great job. I was thinking that to fully appreciate this it's better once you reach a certain age or if you at least have had the misfortune to experience some things. I say that because I was thinking I wouldn't have appreciated it 10 years ago. Every little segment worked for me and the end result was that I felt really small and insignificant. Not really sure how to rate something so short as it's not my norm.