Premise - Ethel and Ernest - Film review

 Ethel and Ernest is a 2016 British Animated film made by Raymond Briggs who is well known for the Snowman, a classic British animation.

Core Premise:

The story of Ethel and Ernest is about Briggs' parents and their relationship from start to finish and their struggle through World War 2. Ethel is from a working class family, although she likes to think she's not, working for a wealthy family as a maid. She spots Ernest cycling past where she works on a daily basis. Each day Ernest, also from a working class family which he embraces, waves to Ethel as he cycles past. On the 5th day he turns up with flowers and this is the spawn of their relationship. The rest of the film follows on from this, following them as they get new jobs, a new house, and a child. The child being the writer of the film Raymond Briggs. A lot of the film shows Briggs' career choices going against what his parents wanted as they got him into a grammar school and wanted him to do something academic, while Briggs' just wanted to study art and become an animator. The film carries on through until the end of their lives with a rather sad ending.


Authors:

Raymond Briggs, from England, is an author, illustrator and cartoonist who is well known in Britain and abroad for his animated films and shorts. His most well known piece of work The Snowman is a Christmas classic in Britain. Briggs' pursued cartooning from an early age as he knew it was what he wanted to do for a career. He studied at Wimbledon School of Art to refine his skills. After serving in the military for 2 years he pursued a career as an illustrator for children's books. He started gaining attention for his works. In 1982 the adaptation of his wordless cartoon called The Snowman was released as an animated Christmas short, despite it not being originally intended as a Christmas film, yet for many who enjoy it it is seen as a hallmark tradition of Christmas in England. Since then he has had various comics and books turned into shorts or films, most notably Fungus the Bogeyman, When the Wind Blows, and Ethel and Ernest.

Production:

The film was produced by a team of animators from Cloth Cat Animation with help from Raymond Briggs. It used a mostly 2D hand drawn animate style with the use of 3D sets and hand drawn textures. This style provides a nostalgic feel and the use of 3D mainly noticeable in war scenes provides a more realistic effect whilst still maintaining the nostalgic feel and hand drawn 2D style even within 3 dimensions.


Reception:

The film premiered on BBC One  and received largely positive reviews. Many people saw the film as evocative of basic human emotions and portrayed a typical working class family in Britain of the time making it relatable to many people from Britain. The animation was seen as very supportive of the story and style of story telling.

Premise - Waltz With Bashir - Film Review

Waltz with Bashir is an Israeli feature-length animated documentary film  released in 2008 and written and directed by Ari Folman. It was one of the first two feature length animated films from Israel.

Core Premise:

This film revolves around Ari Folman, a veteran of the Israeli Defence League in the 1982 Lebanon war, trying to remember the events that happened he had forgotten about or suppressed. This search is triggered when he meets his old friend from that period of time who is having trouble dealing with the events that happened. Folman can't remember the events but has a 'vision' after seeing his old friend. Though this vision isn't clear to him so he begins to search for answers to try and remember his suppressed memories by talking to people who were also veterans of the war and might have been in the same places as him. The memories he found to have suppressed were regarding the Sabra and Shatila massacre, where Israeli forces lit up the camps with flares allowing the Christian Lebanese Phalange Militia to carry out a massacre on Palestinians and Lebanese Shiites. This is quite a controversial part of the war, as although the IDF weren't directly responsible for the massacre they were complacent in its happening and it wasn't really recognised for its atrocities until years after. The film explores Folman's guilt at allowing the gruesome massacre to happen.

Authors:

Walts with Bashir was written and directed by Ari Folman as well as Folman being the main character of the film. It was his first animated film but not his first piece of filmography. His first notable piece of work was his documentary Sha'anan Si, released in 1991. Through his career he has directed live action fiction, documentaries and animations. It can be seen that Waltz with Bashir was Folman's way of addressing his own feelings from the war and exploring how others saw the war and if others had the same guilt that he had over the massacres.

Production:

The animation for this is purely based around the voices. Before starting any of the animation all the voices had been recorded for the entire video. It uses a graphic novel style of drawing with 3d elements. Because of this mix of styles the film has often been confused with rotoscoping which is quite understandable. When watching the film the style reminded me of something in between Archer and A Scanner Darkly,  so I originally thought that every few frames had been rotoscoped then animated in between, but it turns out a lot of it was made Adobe Flash, which explains why the film took 4 years to animate. It is unusual for an entire documentary to be animated as it's just rarely done. However it is clear that this style provides a lot for the format of this documentary, being able to cut seamlessly between present day and the war, while showing how he was suppressing his true memories of the war and was essentially in denial. In one scene he arrives at the Beirut Airport and believes it is a fully functioning airport full of tourists, active plane departures and plentiful shops, but then he realises the airport is largely in ruins, all the planes are wrecked and the stores looted. Being able to slip seamlessly between these two is one of the benefits of this animation style.

Reception:

Waltz with Bashir received largely positive reviews, with many critics seeing the film as original and innovative, with many citing the animation style over a documentary format as the reason for its innovation. The film was produced by a fairly small production company on a fairly small budget of $2million, while it managed to gross over $10million worldwide, showing that it was a success for a seemingly low budget animated feature-length film. The animation style invented by Yoni Goodman, of the animation studio responsible,  was widely praised by critics for its effectiveness in this format.

Premise - Mary and Max - Film Review

Mary and Max is an animated feature length comedy film released in 2009, directed and written by Adam Elliot.

Core Premise:
This film follows the story of the unlikely friendship of 2 people from opposite sides of the world. Max is a 44 year old overweight Jewish man from New York, who is lonely due to his lifetime struggle of making bonds with other people, which at the start is unknown why. Mary is a young girl from Australia who lives with her alcoholic mother and father who is constantly working. She gets teased for her birth mark by other kids at school and generally feels alone with no friends. The one thing they both have in commonan  is their obsession with a television show called "The Noblets" where they both see it as a happy alternative which is colourful and everyone has lots of friends in contrast to their own lives where everything seems bleak and lonely. They become pen pals and form a bond over their shared love of chocolate which becomes a recurring theme. They begin telling each other about their lives and become interested in each other, nervously awaiting each letter. Eventually one of Mary's letter causes a large panic attack for Max which stops him from replying for 8 months. When he finally does he explains how he went to see a therapist and was diagnosed with asperger's disorder, and also how his anxiety attacks stopped him from replying. A lot of the story following on from this centres around Max's newly diagnosed mental disorder. Mary is inspired by it and starts to take an interest in mental health with an aim of curing asperger's disorder. She writes her thesis for her degree on Max and it gains traction to the point it is picked up by a publisher. She sends Max the first copy of the book. When he receives it he goes into a fit of rage as he is not happy with his mental issues being displayed to the public. Trying to find the right words to express his anger he eventually gives up and takes the key for the letter M off his typewriter and sends it to Mary in the post. Realising how she has upset Max she destroys all the copies of the books and spirals into an alcohol fueled period of depression where her husband leaves her and she attempts to  take her own life. Right after her suicide attempt she receives a parcel from Max, who has found it in his heart to forgive her, and gifts her his entire possession of Noblets collectibles. This gives Mary new hope and a new energy on life. She decides to travel to New York to see Max, but when she arrives she finds him dead in his apartment. While initially sad she gazes around the room and notices all the letters, drawings and pictures she had sent max over the years. Plastered over all the ceilings and walls, so she knows that she was always in his heart. In his final letter to Mary, Max had stated that she was his best and only friend.

Authors:
Mary and Max is directed and written by Adam Elliot who was also largely responsible for the stop motion animation. Elliot began making animated films in the 1990s at an arts college in Melbourne, Australia. His first film was an animated short he released as an amateur while still studying. Since then he has made 5 more films which were professionally funded. Mary and Max was Elliot's first feature length animation which managed to get some big actors onboard. Aside from this all his other animations have been short films. Over this time Elliot has had great success with his films submitting them to hundreds of film festivals and winning multiple awards. A lot of his stories seem to be related to issues of his own life and come from personal experience leading to a more authentic style of film making where it comes across as genuine.

Production:
The film is animated in a claymation style, where clay models are animated using stop motion (taking each frame as a picture. This style allows the characters to be molded easily and can quite easily change. This style also lends quite a lot to the effect of the film. While it is a comedy it is still quite dark at points, with multiple deaths throughout the film. The silliness of the animation makes these dark moments more humorous and managed to achieve quite a unique effect I think would be hard to achieve with live action footage or 2D drawn animation.

Reception:
Mary and Max first premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009. From here on it received 2 awards from other film festivals, one of which was for best animated feature film, before it was released to the mainstream in cinemas. While it was never a large success at the box office and didn't garner large amounts of attention, it still received a mostly positive reception from critics and audiences, receiving an astoundingly high score of 95% on the review site Rotten Tomatoes. It was generally seen as being well animated and well written. With many people citing Elliot's dry wit that carries on throughout the film, as well as the 'film noir' style which aided the story in conveying a continuous tone.