The Meaning of Life

United States

2005

12 Min

Color

1.33:1

English

Currently 3.1/5 Stars.
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11,714 Views

CAST Don Hertzfeldt, Jennifer Nyholm, Sara Cushman, Karin Anger, June Shields

Edinburgh

Synopsis

The Meaning of Life is a 35mm animated short film, written and directed by Don Hertzfeldt in 2005. The epic twelve minute film is the end result of almost four years of production and tens of thousands of drawings, single-handedly animated and photographed by Hertzfeldt.

Like all of Hertzfeldt’s films, The Meaning of Life was photographed entirely in-camera, without the use of computers, post-production compositing, or digital tools. The special effects were created via multiple exposures, optical light effects, and trick photography. Though working with an antique camera, Hertzfeldt often had to invent new techniques to capture his visuals.

In the film, the evolution of the human race is traced from prehistory (mankind as blob forms), through today (mankind as teeming crowds of selfish, fighting, or lost individuals), to hundreds of millions of years into the future as our species evolves into countless new forms; all of them still behaving the same way. The film concludes in the extreme future, with two creatures (apparently an adult and child subspecies of future human), having a conversation about the meaning of life on a colorful shore.

The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and toured film and animation festivals in 2005-06. Though its abstract nature puzzled some critics, it received almost universally positive reviews. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution called the film “the closest thing on film yet to Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

In 2006, The Meaning of Life was remastered and restored in high definition for inclusion on the DVD, “Bitter Films Volume 1”, a compilation of Don Hertzfeldt’s short films from 1995-2005. Special features relating to The Meaning of Life include a time-lapse documentary called “Watching Grass Grow” of Hertzfeldt animating the film (apparently over the course of a few years), another documentary about the creation of the special effects narrated by Hertzfeldt, original pencil tests, and dozens of pages devoted to Hertzfeldt’s original sketches, storyboards, notes, and deleted ideas from the film. The DVD is available exclusively from the Bitter Films website, http://www.bitterfilms.com. —Wikipedia

Visit Don Hertzfeldt’s official website at http://www.bitterfilms.com.

Director

Don Hertzfeldt

Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is the creator of many short animated films, including the Academy-Award nominated Rejected and Everything Will Be OK. His animated films have received over one hundred and fifty awards and have been presented around the world. Before the age of thirty, his films were already the subject of several career retrospectives. He was the youngest director named in the “They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They” list of “The 100 Important Animation Directors” of all time, and in 2010 he received the San Francisco International Film Festival’s “Persistence of Vision” Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 33.

The popularity of Hertzfeldt’s work is unprecedented in the history of independent animation and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture. In 2009, the Sundance Film Festival noted, “If cinephiles think shorts don’t generate the same sort of hype and fanbase as feature films, they obviously haven’t heard of Don Hertzfeldt.”
In… read more

Don Hertzfeldt (born August 1, 1976) is the creator of many short animated films, including the Academy-Award nominated Rejected and Everything Will Be OK. His animated films have received over one hundred and fifty awards and have been presented around the world. Before the age of thirty, his films were already the subject of several career retrospectives. He was the youngest director named in the “They Shoot Pictures, Don’t They” list of “The 100 Important Animation Directors” of all time, and in 2010 he received the San Francisco International Film Festival’s “Persistence of Vision” Lifetime Achievement Award at the age of 33.

The popularity of Hertzfeldt’s work is unprecedented in the history of independent animation and his films are frequently quoted and referenced in pop culture. In 2009, the Sundance Film Festival noted, “If cinephiles think shorts don’t generate the same sort of hype and fanbase as feature films, they obviously haven’t heard of Don Hertzfeldt.”
In 2008 and 2009 Hertzfeldt embarked on a 22-city theatrical tour in support of his latest short film, the 22 minute I am so proud of you. “An Evening with Don Hertzfeldt” presented a retrospective of his animated films followed by the regional premiere(s) of I am so proud of you and a rare onstage interview and audience chat with him. At the conclusion of the tour at the Ottawa Animation Festival in October 2009, Hertzfeldt premiered a brand new five minute comedy short called “Wisdom Teeth” as a surprise.

Don Herzfeldt was born in Fremont, California where he attended local schools and drew comic books. At 15, he began to teach himself animation with a small video camera. From a 2001 interview, Don says: “I watched films relentlessly growing up, and was fascinated by visual effects. My family used to make outings to animation festivals in San Francisco every year, so credit my parents for that. I ended up seeing all of those classic [independent] cartoons throughout my teenage years. But animation production for me sort of just happened as a by-product. I’ve been drawing things and writing things all my life, and animating my stories was always cheaper to do and looked more interesting than low budget live action.”

Hertzfeldt has never held any job other than creating his own animated films, not even in his youth. His earliest video animations found film festival exposure, and in film school at the University of California, Santa Barbara, he was able to find international distribution for all of his 16mm student films: Ah, L’Amour, Genre, Lily and Jim, and Billy’s Balloon (all created between the ages of 18-22).

Hertzfeldt lives in Santa Barbara, California and has, to date, produced all his films there. He keeps a blog on his website that has been continually updated (and archived) since 1999. —wikipedia

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