I don’t remember how the subject of Sisyphus came up, but my dad remembered he watched this animated short 30 years ago, found it and showed it to me, because he knows how much I enjoy such things. Marcell Jankovics directed Sisyphus in 1974, and it earned him a well-deserved Oscar nomination.
The short is simple in both story and style. I love his use of line–the weight and texture, how the figure becomes blocky when he most exerts himself, the fluid movment and stylistic facsimile of life. I enjoy minimalism, the exploration of how little one can say or show to communicate well and deeply, the ability of the mind to create closure (and again I reference Scott McCloud).
Jankovics communicates with elegance and subtlety. I admit, the sound of his efforts–all that grunting and groaning–is a bit annoying to my sterilized sensibilities. The Fonz doesn’t groan. But even so I enjoyed the subtle re-emergence of the beginning grunts in the end credits, because it takes the relatively hopeful end, during which Sisyphus scampers back down his heap of rocks, having actually made it to the top, and changes the story back to the full punishment of hell we know it is: he’s going to do exactly that again and again, an exercise in futility, ad infinitum.
(Camus wrote an essay entitled “The Myth of Sisyphus,” in which he describes his philosophy of the absurd. I want to read that. Maybe soon. It’s in the stack, so we’ll see.)
Post a Comment