“You could make a cartoon in crayons about a red square that falls
in unrequited love with a blue circle, and there wouldn’t be a dry eye in the
house if you know how to tell a story.” – Don Hertzfeldt
The above quote totally encapsulates everything about the animated
film "It's Such a Beautiful Day." Though the main character, Bill, is
a stick figure and lives in a crudely animated universe, I was left trying to
remember the last time I watched something so poignant and true. The simple
animation is a bit jarring at first, but very quickly I found myself hanging on
every last word that narrator (and director, producer, writer, animator) Don
Hertzfeldt had to say about the life of Bill.
Bill is a man struggling with a failing memory and is haunted by occasional
surreal visions. His troubled family history, love life, and inner turmoil are
beautifully laid out over a sprawling orchestral soundtrack and are brought to
life with jolting sound and animation effects the likes of which are completely
unique to Hertzfeldt. The subject matter of the film is at times quite dark and
tragic, but there also exists a seamless integration of black humor and stinging
wit. For example, one of the first descriptors we get of the main character is
that “Bill always selects the fruit from the back of the produce pile, because
all the other fruit was at crotch level with the other customers.” The film has
such a relatable nature about it that I found myself connecting with Bill’s
story on multiple levels during its 62-minute run time.
The main theme of “It’s Such a Beautiful Day” is the inevitable
deterioration and death of all living things. This is one of the big elements
of the film that I was able to relate to from my own life. Very gradually, I
have found myself straining to pick something off the ground or being sore for
days after a gym session. These are things that I’ve seldom had to deal with in
my youth; a time when everyone feels indestructible. But slowly, those nicks
and bruises start to take their toll, and old age becomes more and more real. In
the film however, Bill’s deterioration is much more mental than physical, and
he finds himself forgetting simple things that he once took for granted. He
starts struggling to recognize familiar faces, forgets directions, and has
almost no sense of time. Coming from a family with a history of Alzheimer’s and
dementia, this struck me particularly hard. It is a truly terrifying thing to
start to lose one’s memory, and the uncertainty and fear it provokes are all
too realistically displayed by Hertzfeldt.
Another element of Bill’s life that I recognized in my own life
was his sense of routine. Bill worries about the daily routine he’s fallen
into, and “wonders if the routine is his life and the unusual part was the time
spent doing other things.” What a frighteningly apt description. These days, it
is so unbelievably easy to get stuck in a monotonous routine, and the worst
part is that it’s often hard to identify. In my previous post, I mentioned how
important it is to take a step back from your life every now and then for
maintenance purposes. After I moved into my first apartment last year, I would
wake up, skip breakfast, go to work, eat the same thing for lunch as yesterday,
come back, eat dinner in front of the television and before long it was time
for bed. On weekends I would sit around during the day and get drunk with my
friends at night. What kind of quality of life is that? There’s no advancement,
little room for intellectual thought and before you know it, life has passed
by. Bill grows a lot during the film and slowly breaks through the monotony,
and by the end he wants “to stop everyone in the street and ask ‘Isn’t this
amazing? Isn’t everything amazing?’”
“It’s Such a Beautiful Day” is one of the most emotionally full
and striking films that I have ever seen. If you’ve got a Netflix subscription
and an internet connection, take an hour out of your life to go enjoy it,
because this is a film that’ll stick for a long time and hopefully help you break
out of that daily routine. I’ll leave you with one final piece of wisdom from
the film, this time coming from Bill’s uncle, who at this point Bill can hardly
recognize: “It’s too bad people don’t say how they feel until it’s too late.”
So go tell everyone how you feel, and once in a while stop to realize
what a beautiful day it really is.
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