Don Hertzfeldt’s latest short film, ME, is a disturbing feast for the modern senses, as confusing as it is kinetic.
Director: Don Hertzfeldt
Genre: Short Film, Animation, Comedy
Run Time: 22′
US & UK Release: May-November, 2024
Where to watch: in theaters
ME is a little miracle. Originally intended as part of a collaboration with a musical act, it was abandoned after the unidentified artists were involved in a controversy. Director Don Hertzfeldt then salvaged the pieces and turned it into his latest experimental sci-fi while retaining its musical origins. It booms with bass and stuns with a show-stopping operatic climax, soundtracking his trademark absurdist and existential animation.
Described simply as ‘a musical odyssey about the retreat of humanity into itself’, it begins with the propulsive percussion of Brent Lewis’s ‘Dinner at the Sugarbush’ over domestic scenes that quickly devolve as fighting and atrocities take place in the background. With dialogue mostly made up of symbols in speech bubbles, the confusion and misinterpretation feel intentional as the social order breaks down and everything becomes fragmented across lifespans and planes of existence. If that sounds confusing, it is; although Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow trilogy became increasingly complex with more clones and more universes, each episode had individual lines of profundity that cut through the complex genre conventions.
By comparison, ME has fewer clues to unlock it. Instead, it is a welcome reminder that art is to be felt before it is to be understood. In its short twenty two minutes, we see streets erupt into violence, the birth of an adorably sentient eyeball, a disturbing skinless figure with hundreds of electronic pathways criss-crossing out of its brain, and people plugged into screens that appear to see through time and space. It is thrown at you as fast as strobe lighting, of which there is plenty, and slapstick jokes sit alongside heartbreaking moments of abandonment. It is a sitcom-length package of unfocused anxiety, finding brief glimpses of love and brevity among an onslaught of modern-day life that is simply all too much.
Released in cinemas as part of a double bill with his acclaimed It’s Such a Beautiful Day, the film is a chance to marvel at how one of animation’s greatest minds has developed over the years. Originally working with antique cameras and hand-drawn sketches, he embraced digital with World of Tomorrow which brought a colourful vibrancy to his art, all while engaging with the concerns of our current time. While other filmmakers have depicted modern living online, like Bo Burnham with both Eighth Grade and Inside, Hertzfeldt is more interested in how it all feels.
How it feels is often nonsensical and indescribably aggressive, occasionally beautiful and a marvel to behold, just like Hertzfeldt’s films. Random scenes of silliness, cruelty, and grace are thrown our way every day on social media feeds, and it takes a generational artist like Hertzfeldt to capture that experience cinematically and have us sit with what it is doing to us all.
When the noise of ME quietens and gives way to an extended operatic performance, there is a sense of it as a lament for a time already long gone. This centuries-old art form is inherently analogue and human, juxtaposed here with a digital din that taints everything it touches. The connections fostered via technology conversely dilute our connection to the world around us, requiring artificial channels that strip back something usually communicated via eye contact, body language, and even something unknowable like our chemistry and souls.
But with little in the way to place yourself among ME, other interpretations are available; its disorientating and abstract nature means it resonates a little less than It’s Such a Beautiful Day and World of Tomorrow on a deeply touching level. Certainly though, Hertzfeldt continues to be one of the greatest living animated storytellers and finds ways to use the medium that pushes it forward with each new piece of work he creates. With ME he has again gone to bat for short films, and in twenty two minutes plays with more ideas than many directors do in entire careers.
ME and It’s Such a Beautiful Day are now being screened in select UK cinemas and US theaters. Visit Bitter Films’ official site for the full list of venues.
