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#265 - Rejected
Don Hertzfeldt, 2000
A handful of animated shorts created by Don Hertzfeldt tied together by their being rejected by the clients who requested them.
After having watched It's Such a Beautiful Day, I decided to re-watch the film that was my first serious exposure to the twisted creations of Don Hertzfeldt - his Oscar-nominated short film Rejected, which can be found in full on YouTube and is only about nine minutes in length. The film's plot, such as it has one, plays out entirely behind the scenes as Hertzfeldt is employed by the (fictitious) Family Learning Channel television network to create educational TV spots, as well as by the (also fictitious) Johnson and Mills consumer goods corporation, who want him to make ads for their products. Of course, Hertzfeldt's extremely off-kilter sense of humour and uncanny animation style immediately make it clear why these two clients opted to repeatedly reject his shorts. They start off bizarrely enough with bug-eyed cartoons speaking nonsense, but soon the fictional version of Hertzfeldt starts folding under pressure and the cartoons become increasingly violent and deranged until eventually the film resolves in an extremely destructive climax.
Even though some of the jokes come across as juvenile, Rejected is still a solid piece of work that perfectly demonstrates Hertzfeldt's bizarre sensibilities in the space of a few minutes. The minimal production values and animation style make up a lot of the film's charm, as do the white-on-black intertitles backed by snippets of Beethoven. The shorts' gradual shift from the quirky to the unsettling is handled surprisingly well, as is the film's climax (which, without giving too much away, definitely hints at the sort of medium-bending experimentation that became very well-realised in It's Such a Beautiful Day). I definitely think I need to check out more of Hertzfeldt's work - they might not be guaranteed to match up to Rejected, but Rejected definitely makes the most of its potential and is an enjoyably ridiculous piece of work with just enough depth to elevate it above its cruder elements.
Don Hertzfeldt, 2000
A handful of animated shorts created by Don Hertzfeldt tied together by their being rejected by the clients who requested them.
After having watched It's Such a Beautiful Day, I decided to re-watch the film that was my first serious exposure to the twisted creations of Don Hertzfeldt - his Oscar-nominated short film Rejected, which can be found in full on YouTube and is only about nine minutes in length. The film's plot, such as it has one, plays out entirely behind the scenes as Hertzfeldt is employed by the (fictitious) Family Learning Channel television network to create educational TV spots, as well as by the (also fictitious) Johnson and Mills consumer goods corporation, who want him to make ads for their products. Of course, Hertzfeldt's extremely off-kilter sense of humour and uncanny animation style immediately make it clear why these two clients opted to repeatedly reject his shorts. They start off bizarrely enough with bug-eyed cartoons speaking nonsense, but soon the fictional version of Hertzfeldt starts folding under pressure and the cartoons become increasingly violent and deranged until eventually the film resolves in an extremely destructive climax.
Even though some of the jokes come across as juvenile, Rejected is still a solid piece of work that perfectly demonstrates Hertzfeldt's bizarre sensibilities in the space of a few minutes. The minimal production values and animation style make up a lot of the film's charm, as do the white-on-black intertitles backed by snippets of Beethoven. The shorts' gradual shift from the quirky to the unsettling is handled surprisingly well, as is the film's climax (which, without giving too much away, definitely hints at the sort of medium-bending experimentation that became very well-realised in It's Such a Beautiful Day). I definitely think I need to check out more of Hertzfeldt's work - they might not be guaranteed to match up to Rejected, but Rejected definitely makes the most of its potential and is an enjoyably ridiculous piece of work with just enough depth to elevate it above its cruder elements.