It’s Such a Beau­ti­ful Day

First there was dark­ness. Then a spark of remem­brance. His synaps­es begin to fire out of con­trol, so rapid­ly in fact that patch­es of the flat world peel away, reveal­ing glim­mers of sub­jec­tive mem­o­ry and his­to­ry that exist in a per­pet­u­al vac­u­um of intense feel­ing. Whether or not these images are trust­wor­thy remains a moot point; their very cre­ation is a sign of tenac­i­ty and a will to live.

Such bright cin­e­mat­ic flick­ers allow every moment, no mat­ter how mun­dane or false, no mat­ter how mon­strous or dev­as­tat­ing, a sense of won­drous momen­tum that will nev­er stop over­lap­ping. To stop would be the equiv­a­lent of fad­ing to black for­ev­er, and he has so much more to see.

So begins the for­mal­ist earth­quake that is Don Hertzfeldt’s ani­ma­tion It’s Such A Beau­ti­ful Day, an immer­sive mas­ter­piece of mul­ti­framed com­po­si­tions, blotch­es of vibrant colour and ellip­ti­cal edit­ing that calls to mind the greats of Sovi­et mon­tage. Pre­vi­ous­ly released as three sep­a­rate shorts (Every­thing Will Be OK, I Am So Proud Of You and It’s Such A Beau­ti­ful Day), this debut fea­ture works won­ders as a cohe­sive long­form essay. Tak­en as a whole, it’s an ambi­tious and provoca­tive bless­ing that man­ages to be about every­thing and any­thing and always with­out sound­ing pretentious.

Upon first view­ing, it’s hard not to see it as The Tree Of Life of ani­ma­tion. Malick’s insane­ly lyri­cal sense of cin­e­mat­ic and musi­cal pro­gres­sion is an unde­ni­able influ­ence on Hertzfeldt. Yet oth­er auteurist threads become more pro­nounced on repeat view­ings: Ozu’s obses­sion with lone­li­ness and dete­ri­o­ra­tion; Carpenter’s desire to reveal the mon­ster hid­ing inside us all; and Kubrick’s point­ed tran­si­tions from the famil­iar toward the epic unknown.

Told through the strick­en eyes of Bill, a sick­ly yet end­less­ly inquis­i­tive man per­pet­u­al­ly tor­ment­ed by the love­ly con­tra­dic­tions of every­day life, Hertzfeldt’s film utilis­es a stream-of-con­scious­ness style that engages ideas large and small, emo­tions vast and per­son­al with effort­less ease. Voiceover nar­ra­tion and clas­si­cal music cues are essen­tial to telling Bill’s mul­ti-faceted sto­ry, which con­stant­ly calls into ques­tion the incon­sis­ten­cies of his past, the hypocrisies of his present and the ter­ri­fy­ing uncer­tain­ty of his not so dis­tant future.

By explor­ing the opaque cor­ners of Bill’s frac­tured tale in this very spe­cif­ic way, Hertzfeldt leans heav­i­ly on rep­e­ti­tion to con­nect bits of irony and fate that some­times take place hun­dreds of years apart. Take for instance the sur­re­al­ist mid­dle sec­tion of the film, where Bill’s past mem­o­ries of fam­i­ly trau­ma pro­duce a ver­i­ta­ble well­spring of tall tales, dis­joint­ed visions and unex­plain­able happenstance.

One of the most dev­as­tat­ing flash­backs involves Bill’s cousin Ran­dall, a dis­abled boy with hooks for hands and flim­sy legs. One sun­ny day, Ran­dall sees a gull in the sky and joy­ous­ly chas­es the bird into the ocean, nev­er return­ing again. There’s so much feel­ing in the tenor of Hertzfeldt’s voice, as if the direc­tor was con­fess­ing some­thing per­son­al by way of his character’s per­spec­tive. Here, the sub­lime and heart­felt sit side-by-side.

The same rela­tion­ship can be found when the film ful­ly embraces rou­tine as metaphor imme­di­ate­ly after Bill is released from the hos­pi­tal pend­ing a near-death expe­ri­ence. Dur­ing his dai­ly walks around town, time and space seem to fold on top of each oth­er into one infi­nite con­tin­u­um, becom­ing a cin­e­mat­ic space for resilience. Instead of the usu­al­ly dynam­ic split screens that dom­i­nate most of It’s Such A Beau­ti­ful Day, the image of Bill casu­al­ly strolling down the street day after day, mak­ing the same obser­va­tions, obvi­ous­ly suf­fer­ing from some kind of men­tal break­down, fills the frame entire­ly. Famil­iar life has become not so famil­iar, a mosa­ic of vague­ly remem­bered thoughts pro­ject­ed over and over again.

Lat­er, dur­ing the final seg­ment, Bill tran­scends his ill­ness and becomes a world­ly and immor­tal being. Hertzfeldt’s scope tips from melan­cholic to grandiose. Bill’s end­less quest to learn all lan­guages and to expe­ri­ence all things can be seen as a pro­longed moment of tran­scen­dence for a char­ac­ter once defined by self-doubt and now at peace with his own expand­ing poten­tial. Clear­ly the process of liv­ing itself, with all of its strange­ness and heartache and epipha­nies, is what allows us to realise that death and fear are very dif­fer­ent ide­olo­gies. Only one of them can tru­ly destroy us.

That Hertzfeldt man­ages to do all this and more in just 61 min­utes is not only a tes­ta­ment to the film’s break­neck pace and dynam­ic jux­ta­po­si­tions, but also its last­ing and com­plex view of the human spir­it. Over the course of the film, Bill learns to embrace the pos­si­bil­i­ty of his own mor­tal­i­ty with­out fear, and in turn, ​“he lives and he lives until all the lights go out.” The bit­ter end may not be so bit­ter after all.