Studio: Xilam Animation
Watched on 02/03/20
***SPOILERS***
A nice little journey but overhyped by the animation community.
Overall, the film achieves its objective of amazing visual storytelling. The creators set themselves the challenge of having a non-human(-body), non-speaking major character in the Hand. This allowed them to do a lot of brilliant things to show feelings and communicate emotions through things other than dialogue and facial expressions. They show just how good they are at this in the first scene, when the Hand escapes through the window, then presses itself flat against the wall and in the shadows; tension and relief all without dialogue. Some other excellent examples are when the Hand is on its knuckles by the stream (as a person would be on their knees) and just how content the Hand looks when it perches on the blind man's piano. It's clear from early on in the film however that the Hand is not the main character nor the focus of the story.
The film ends up being quite a typical weird, French romance. The real story is that of the lead character, Naoufel. The story is interesting and gets you invested and really is gripping at times but ultimately goes nowhere. There's a little bit of character development but there's nothing to the plot - the focus is much more on the journey than the destination (which I find super wack, generally). Not only does the story go nowhere but there are also very clear and distinct plot points that just go unanswered. The lack of explanation of why the Hand is alive (and can both see and hear) genuinely does not need explaining - it works well enough to suspend your disbelief, particularly in this medium - but who the hell collected the Hand and put it in a jar in a fridge? Why was there a jar of eyeballs? Who was the person in the pigeon mask graffitiing on the rooftop? Why was there so much focus on them?? The film would literally have worked just fine without these things but they were included anyway for some odd reason. I'm hoping they're part of some niche Parisian cultural reference that went over my head, because otherwise they served no purpose whatsoever. The ending is also incredibly unsatisfying. The run and jump onto the crane is really not a goal nor focus other than one conversation and throwaway comment. In fact, it was far more effective in that throwaway comment because the point was the viewer isn't expecting it (as the conversation alludes to). But it isn't the main character's major obstacle by any means, so makes a really anticlimactic ending. I will say thought that the 5 minutes or so before that are very well done, creating plenty of good quality tension.
I'd have liked the film a whole lot more of they'd kept on pushing the envelope in regards to animating a hand to convey human emotions. If they'd continued to challenge themselves to do that and further the story that way (as well as fucking complete it), it would have been much more deserving of all the praise. The choice to focus on what is quite an uninteresting human element to the story is what limited for me, essentially doing the opposite of what made 'Godzilla: King of the Monsters' good to its fans. (G:KOM just focused on the giant monsters fucking each other up, rather than boring, introspective human stories. Critics hated that but the fans loved it.)
Generally speaking, characters were quite flat throughout. They all fit an archetype or trope without showing a whole lot of range/depth outside the very important main characters (Naoufel, Gabriella and Gigi). But even those 3 had very limited levels of complication to their characters and barely grew or changed throughout the film. Naoufel's ultimate growth into being slightly less of a coward is a little abrupt and he's honestly not likeable enough as a character for that to even feel powerful. His backstory and coping mechanisms are very cool and the use of the recordings as plot device was great too. The directors do a good job of sprinkling these recordings throughout the film to keep the viewer waiting for answers.
I think directing and general approach was great. Again, visual storytelling was very strong from start to finish with lots of great shots directing the eye to exactly what the director wants and telling the story by showing (not telling).
The animation is good. Maybe very good but not amazing; there weren't many instances that left me genuinely amazed from an animation perspective. One that did however was the umbrella scene which sends the Hand into a spiral over busy traffic. The transition from blurry car lights to a star-covered space view was very clever but the scene was made by how well they animated the turning of the hand itself. The is was the best example of the concept of solid drawing being well displayed throughout the film, with animals, objects and buildings all feeling very 3-dimensional. Outside of that, the animation was believable enough to get the viewer invested in the story but definitely not the most impressive animation you'll ever see. I can also appreciate the appeal and tone of the highly stylised art and animation styles however, again, neither was amazing.
Overall 6/10. Holds the attention well and has moments of brilliance but the lack of great characters and a real story meant I personally didn't really enjoy it.
Update 31/03/2020: After reading about the making of the film, I'm quite impressed by how the animators were able to create this 2D film in a '3D' environment in blender. This doesn't change the effect of the animation and how it tells the story, but it's an interesting point worth noting.