Furiko

Story:
Furiko is brief but still manages to convey a meaningful message. It is a story of a man full of regrets and how he deals with the sad reality that time can't be reset. Most men will eventually experience this at some point in their lifetime. It is a simple story, but one that is rare in this medium. It is touching and realistic. This special is a necessary watch.

Character:
The main character, most of the time, is indifferent towards others. He is a pessimist and a klutz, but one who is common among humans. He is someone many adults can relate, but not celebrate. ... His daily life is a painful cycle of adulthood. It's not that this guy had hit rock bottom or anything, but he lacks appreciation of the people around him. One can be jealous of the life he has, but for some reason, he lives an unfulfilling existence.

Presentation:
The flow of the story is fast just like a music video. The art is simplistic and suitable. The song chosen splendidly encapsulates the feeling of nostalgia. It is surrounded by a melancholic vibe.

Pendulum is a 2012 animated short film, and throughout its three minutes the short features a clock’s swinging pendulum to show the passage of time and transition the images of a man’s marriage. I was worried this would be like another short film called House of Small Cubes in that it aims for the heart strings but by featuring such a generic life it doesn’t gain the impact from pulling off such worn sentiments in art. To my surprise, Pendulum is far more personal and doesn’t try to represent every man’s life so much as a specific one, and thus its emotional impact is more ... defined and we know the actual significance of the imagery as it actually feels like the narration of a man’s subconscious hang-ups. Which are those of love, indulgence, and regret. The minimalistic sketch style is distinctive enough, and the pendulum transitions are allowed a more dynamic, emotional rhythm when paired with occasional zooms that do away with the moving, circular frame but transfer that kinetic energy into rotating panning shots of critical moments. It’s a solid watch, and touched me a bit. The short is set to alternative rock band Muse’s “Exogenesis: Symphony Part 3 (Redemption)”.

I'm inclined to not like these kind of experimental + sentimental shorts. It takes the premium sap of a melodrama, searches for some kind of novel motif that can be repeated throughout, lest it become too trite, slaps on wedding music you might find on the Hallmark channel, and then you can proceed to let your tears form a river, if you are so inclined.

Does taking the standard story of boy meets girl, the formation of a family, and then growing old together, stripping out all of the substance and universalizing it, lead to a more artistic or worthwhile short? Would a longer work that ... adds the parts in-between the highlights shown here be better? It's always a matter of execution, but there's such a depersonalized everyman quality to this that it rings hollow. A long-form work can allow the artist to remove the sap and (hopefully) develop a more affecting work. With the short form, we're forced to substitute the maple syrup for high fructose corn syrup to have any effect at all.

The back-and-forth pendulum of a clock gimmick is fairly nice for creative animation and to avoid an excessive amount of cuts—it presents the animation with a free-flow stream of consciousness to the events, but it gets a little tiresome. There's plenty of revolving camera movement and the camera always remains dynamic, the more calm the pendulum becomes. There's not much experimentation with the basic idea other than the obvious futility of attempting to stop time. Everything about the short is predictable.

I'd partly like to experiment with setting this to different music, as I think the cloying sounds are the worst thing about this short—there's almost nothing I despise more than sentimental piano + violin. Gag. I'm sure many people will say "It's beautiful uwu" or "The most perfect thing I've ever heard along with stunning animation," but it makes me ill just thinking about it.