There is so much to love about this short movie. The audio is superbly orchestrated and the music & sound effects back up the visuals to create drama and intrigue.
The combination of 3D animation along with the black & white visuals creates a great canvas that is both darkly dramatic and allows the subtle gestures of the 'cast' to shine through.
The story gently unfolds and with only a few lines of dialogue and a few pages of elegant scrolling text. Then again it's a familiar story. Male develops fascination with a local female performer, finds out they are captive of their start status and he breaks her out. Together they both feel complete but a successful star always has a lot of people who don't want them running off, during flight they are separated. She returns to her captive life while he is left badly beaten and left for dead. Then years later he is picked up by the show as the freak and they are reunited once more.
The thing I most love is the subtlety of everything in the film. Simple 3D models come to life with a 'raised eyebrow' or a smooth panning shot. Along with the combination of the 'cast' being robots and the look of an early 20th century movie the movie creates a unique environment.
The main pair are the simple worker robots and the rest of the robots are freakish, dark and shady characters from the show. The whole piece is very well timed with a good balance of light and dark, suspense and drama, intrigue and surprise.
A nice gentle break from the over attention grabbing media that is all to prevalent these days and a reminder of how powerful being subtle can be.
