Duck, Death, and the Tulip is a beautifully made, minimal, short animation about a duck who finds that death has been following it for its entire life. Via Short of the week:
Based on Wolf Erlbruch’s picture book of the same name, Jorge Sandoval and Ella Yoon’s stellar, tranquil animation feels like if Ingmar Bergman had made a children’s film—it’s a poetic, philosophical story about death and friendship, told through the non-traditional lens of a storybook world. It’s a film filled with allegory and symbolism, but beyond the intellectual nourishment it offers, it’s also a surprisingly heartwarming take on loss, life, and inevitability. You know, typical kid’s stuff…
Death is so often attributed both in cinema and literature as a malevolent force—a scythe-wielding agent of horror. But, here, he is a beacon of non-traditional comfort, intimate and warm. The act of death and loss is a hard thing to really grasp. There’s is sadness to it, to be sure, but also a reassurance in its inevitability. Death will come for all of us, so this film, in a sense, is asking one to embrace that fact—to befriend the notion. And, so in this story, a companionship forms between our titular heroes—partners in life, and, well, death.
Even though it’s a few years old, the film’s ultra-wide aspect ratio makes me itch to see this animation on the big screen. Unfortunately, being shown online doesn’t do really do it justice. Still, we’re excited to finally getting around to featuring it.