Ranked #40

La Maison en Petits Cubes

La Maison en Petits Cubes is a masterpiece of a short film, a beautiful and poignant reflection of decades of a human life given in a matter of minutes.

In a world where the sea has covered most everything, a few lone buildings remain, their roofs sometimes barely peeking out of the water. In one of these houses, an old man lives--if one could call it living. La Maison en Petits Cubes allows us to truly contemplate living by giving us a life at its end and letting us wonder how exactly did all this come to be. The plot manoeuvres from the finish line of this old man's life, taking us on a literal journey back to the beginning. In a stroke of bad luck, this nameless old man makes a decision to swim to the bottom levels of his house where barely anything but water and shells from his past remain.

As he descends lower and lower into his house of cubes, he goes further and further back in time. His journey below takes him figuratively to his past, to precious and pivotal moments that a man in his twilight has left to look back on. What is important to such a man? It's curious how the answer is within the very walls he built, in the place that houses his entire life and the things and people that meant the world to him. There is no outside, there is no grandeur. There is comfort, safety, and nostalgia.

The subtlety with which the story is told is one of this movie's most magnificent aspects. Moments of this man's life are eased into the frames; they are revealed to us through his retrospection and recollection. Little details that speak enormously of the time that has passed him by and his history. A bed that remains underwater in one of the lower floors says so much about what has happened in his life. There was no need to carry it up with him. There was nobody left to occupy it.

La Maison en Petits Cubes utilises a more traditionally European style of animation. It looks nothing like anime, and is highly reminiscent of Western artwork. The soft palettes used create a gentle, sombre atmosphere. It looks like, and it is, a fantasy world gently crafted with dull tones and earthy colours. There is symbolism in the art as well that should be noted. Each room is significantly larger than the next as he moves downwards. The loneliness that one feels as they grow older is best seen in the single room that the old man lives in at the top of his house. The grander rooms represent vitality, life, growth. Very rarely do animated movies make use of the setting and props as instruments of deeper meaning.

The sound consists of slow, picked acoustic guitars, sweet, melodic woodwinds, sometimes contemplative, sometimes playful piano, pretty xylophone pieces, and strings that ache heavily with emotion. Every noise becomes important, even a drop of water bears enormous significance. There is no dialogue from the old man, and this is proven to be best. The quality of this film is measured by what is heard and that which is not heard. We hear the sound of life all around the old man and yet there is no sound from him. The score of La Maison en Petits Cubes is a wonderfully stirring composition that manages to sweep our emotions along with it.

As for the characters, there is only really the old man. Time has left him old, wrinkled, but his spirit and determination is apparent as he, without complaint, carries on with his life. Though he never speaks, his words are apparent through his actions, his expression, his memories of all the pain he has felt, all his happiness, his losses, his joys, and his heartbreaks. He is a man who has witnessed things constantly changing all through his life, and he knows that things never remain the same. So perhaps, his circumstance is even more touching when he tries to cling on to old habits and those lovely memories. Though other characters appear only briefly, they are more shadows than something tangible like the old man's presence.

La Maison en Petits Cubes takes us in from its first scenes, and you can only sit back and watch in quiet wonderment at what you may see next as the old man swims lower and lower, and he retraces those moments further and further into the past. And what a beautiful and painful lesson to be learned awaits the audience and himself when he reaches the very bottom. It is a truth that has been spoken for ages.

A man is born alone, he dies alone. He makes his life, and where life takes him and who life brings to him are the things that makes living not so lonely--the rooms of the house in La Maison en Petits Cubes best emulate that truth. But this beautiful film does not let us mull over that grim reality with its wonderful fantasy; we are also given another truth, a much more comforting one. Perhaps we are really not as alone as we think.

In fact, as this magnificent movie indirectly shows us, we can never truly be left alone. In some way or another, we can always find a way to keep those we love close to us. read more

Overview:
Maison en Petit Cubes is a metaphorical and heartfelt exploration of everything that lies behind an old man`s seemingly meaningless existence. His world is flooded, and all the houses that managed to keep above the water have been stacked like pyramids, with each living space getting progressively smaller. Our lethargic old man`s now jail cell sized room has just been flooded, so he gets to work building yet another, smaller room at the top of his house. As he works, he drops his pipe into the water. Unwilling to part with it, he dawns diving gear and goes through each level of his house to get to the bottom, finding memories associated with each room in the process.

Story:
The rich metaphors in this film leave an openness to interpretation that can be mulled over for quite a while. Perhaps the pyramidal structures symbolize how life degrades, and grows progressively emptier until it is but a tiny shard of the fullness it once possessed. Or maybe the little chunk sticking above the water represents how this old man`s life looks insignificant to the outside world, but hidden beneath the surface is the wealth of vivacity that has brought him to this point. Maybe the flooding itself is a nod to rising sea levels and global warming. These ideas are amusing to ponder, but Maison en Petit Cubes does not rely on them to deliver its emotional punch. That comes from its silent and simple story telling.

As the old man explores each room of his house, he dives deeper and deeper into his past. At first, he is stricken with a few sweet memories of his late wife. From the framed pictures on his walls, we already know he cherishes her memory, so these flashbacks are easily passed off as bouts of nostalgia not uncommon for a man his age. As he explores the lower levels, he travels further and further in time, down to the point where the foundations lay, with each level triggering more memories. It becomes clear eventually that it is not simple nostalgia that he experiencing, it`s a retread of his entire life, all of which is held between the walls of his house. The old man is enviable for the beauty of his life; most of us can only hope for an existence as fulfilling and picturesque as his, but he is pitiable for everything that he has lost since his prime. It is these emotions we feel for him, and those that we feel vicariously through him as he evaluates his years that makes this short film so affecting.

Animation & Sound:
The European inspired setting is drawn like a western children`s book. The designs bare no resemblance to conventional Anime visuals. The penciled look and the choppy animations further enhance the children`s book aesthetic. It looks almost like the moving pages of a flip book. The sound and visuals both work together to establish the different moods in this film. Accompanying the old man`s daily life is a deep, but plain color palette, and a guitar string piece that is at once melancholic and playful. His memories are washed in an off white, like the color of old photographs, and played along gentle, but heart wrenching piano or strings. There isn`t any dialogue, and the man has very few facial expressions, or expressive animations in general, but the shift in musical and visual themes gently guide us to the emotions he is experiencing in every scene.

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Could such a grand theme like the meaning of life be tackled with anything but a short and silent film? It seems as if a certain pretentious, know-it-all essence would taint any lines regarding the subject. Maison en Petit Cubes gives us full reign of emotional and philosophical interpretation by eliminating words altogether. While that prevents the viewer from perceiving any pretensions, the universality of the emotions it aims to express makes it instantly poignant. read more