Directors – Will McCormack, Michael Govier – 2020 – US – 12m
*****
A couple and their spirit selves are haunted by a tragic loss from their family’s past in this beautifully economic, drawn animated short about grief and loss – on Netflix and winner of Best Animated Short at the 2020 / 2021 (93rd) Oscars
Drawn animation. A couple eat at home. Meatballs and spaghetti. Silently. Drawn in stark, gloomy black and white lines. Behind them, in sharply outlined areas of black smudge, the shadows of their spirit selves or perhaps their memories argue. This relationship is in trouble.
They go about the business of everyday living, in empty black and white, trying to snatch moments of individual joy where they can. He wanders round the outside of the house, noticing once again that bit of plasterwork he really should get fixed. She tends the potted plants and takes the laundry out of the machine, picking up the child-sized blue t-shirt. He sits watching the TV with a can of drink. She wanders into the bedroom with the empty bed and somehow the record player and a pop song gets turned on.
Happier times, playing football with their daughter (10) in the garden, the ball taking off a chuck of the wall cladding. Three happy black spirits. Saying goodbye as she goes off to school. The two parental spirits willing her not to go, as if they know something terrible will happen. But isn’t it like that every day when your child leaves? The big red white and blue flag in the school hallway. The closed doors of lessons. The text on a smartphone screen, “If Anything Happens I Love You”.
This little essay of parental bereavement is clearly anti-gun, but it doesn’t pit the finger so much as spend time with those affected by the pain of loss, remembering what might have been and struggling to carry on with whatever’s left, although that seems both unbearable and impossible.
Drawn animation, which is by definition myriad drawings, is the perfect medium for all this. Images here are composed alternately of stark, gloomy black and white and that same palette influenced by the intrusion of a colour here and an area of colour wash there to effectively express various shades of the characters’ emotional states, including the darker ones.
Winner of Best Animated Short at the 2020 / 2021 (93rd) Oscars.
If Anything Happens I Love You is on Netflix.
Trailer: