SUNDANCE 2023 | Short Film Review: "The Flying Sailor"
Animated short films shouldn’t necessarily need to pack a punch, but when the punch is as transcendently shattering as it is in the NFB-produced The Flying Sailor, one gets the feeling that... maybe they should?
This new work from accomplished Canadian animation duo Wendy Tilby and Amanda Forbis portrays large-scale destruction as it is experienced on the scale of a single victim. The disaster in question: the Halifax explosion of 1917, an unfortunate collision between two ships in a Nova Scotia harbour that resulted in history’s “largest accidental non-nuclear explosion by magnitude” (for context, the 2020 Beirut explosion sits in the number six spot behind this event’s number one). The blast killed 1,782 people on that fateful day, and obliterated entire communities, but the subject of this short - a bald, portly sailor who gets thrown from the blast site - isn’t depicted fathoming such magnitudes. The Flying Sailor renders the famed explosion as implosion in the mind of this lone sailor, as a lifetime compressed into a kaleidoscopic “flash” before his eyes.
I used the word “shattering” because what Tilby and Forbis have so fantastically rended from imagination is a shattering inner journey, one that so impactfully and so poetically encapsulates the frailty of human life. Just as our poor sailor is thrown from the ka-boom, so too is he thrown back in time, through memories of bar fights and stumbling through the grass as a toddler. In the way he is depicted as having his clothes blown off of him (something that actually happened to some folks involved in the explosion), sent soaring in what resembles a fetal position, the hapless seaman even seems to reenact a return to birth. Could these Earth-shaking events stand as markers that define the tumultuous cycles of life? Can acts of destruction foster creation?
At just seven-minutes in length, The Flying Sailor gives us much to ponder when it comes to mortality. If one is not inclined to confront such “shattering” topics, there is plenty to marvel at and be enraptured by when it comes to the film’s crafting. From the delirium-inducing editing, to the dynamic and enveloping sound design, everything here works to pull one into the transformative centre of a boom’s rippling effects. The score, by Luigi Allemano, strikes oddly comforting tones of tranquility, which contrast beautifully with the film’s maelstrom. While the short may lack the charming character work of previous efforts from the directors, one can’t help but walk away from this sailor’s story a little shaken, and maybe even a bit changed.
The Flying Sailor screens at Sundance as part of Short Film Program 4, and becomes available online starting January 24th. If you reside in Canada, the short can be viewed online for free HERE.