I stumbled across this short (14 minute) film on Twitter--it's apparently nominated for an Oscar. The first image was so arresting--a house held by bolts and ropes to the side of an icy cliff. A little boy swings over the abyss.





The art is beautiful--I watched entranced. In the wordless story, a bereaved father and son have a set routine: every morning, they chip a brick of ice that the father has left out to freeze the night before. They put the pieces in a bag and parachute down to the town far below--sharing one parachute (the son is essentially in a carrier on the father's chest). They sell their ice for a few coins. Every afternoon they pulley themselves back up to their house. They eat dinner by their wood stove; the son swings, the father fills the box with water to turn into ice for the next day.

( But I have a major criticism: conservation of caps )

It's truly gorgeous animation. I was mesmerized by the (rest of the) details, and I appreciated how I could feel the father and son's emotions though everything was very understated. And ( spoiler ). I just wish the director had hit upon a different mechanism to fulfill the role the hats end up fulfilling.




**It would be pretty hypocritical for me, who wrote about a temple suspended from chains bolted to the walls of a volcanic crater, to object to a house bolted to the side of a cliff.