The reality of it was so much more than that however. If nothing else the stop motion is beautiful. It's smooth and you forget that you're watching stop motion at all. The human movement of the characters is so precise. At first I found myself thinking "...what? What is this about?" my first impression was that it is about life and death and no matter how hard you try to fight against it we are all destined for the same fate. It wasn't until I really thought about it and noticed that the characters are in what looks like a train trailer for transporting animals that the reality of the film dawned on me. It's subtle and I didn't notice it at first but the lights moving on either side of the trailer, coming through the wooden slats suggest that they are indeed on a train and that the train is moving. It made me think of the victims of the holocaust and the unravelling of the string as a metaphor for the Nazi regime stripping away the very essences of their persona's until nothing remained of the person they once were.
This little film moved me and unsettled me and it really is worth a watch if you have a bit of time. It made me think about how sometimes animation can be a much more powerful tool for portraying bleak subject matter and important issues. With a live action film, the viewer knows what they are seeing so needs not to work it out for themselves. The experience of discovering what this film was all about was a much more memorable experience and led to a more powerful reading of the film, because it was not immedietly obvious and to have your preconceptions and assumptions shifted so dramatically is quite an experience.
Upon reading the blurb in the video description I discovered that the film is actually about deportation.
Ulo Pikkov on Vimeo Nukufilm
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