Jason Sondhi

Our 4th review of the 2009 Sundance online offerings is a short, violent, and very amusing stop motion. A poem in fact. A warped and absurd little fairy tale that fits very well into the Adult Swim geek sensibility that I possess. Thus I liked a lot of what 24-year-old Cal Arts student Max Winston brought to this experimental animation.

A purple-bearded woodsman is our protagonist, running and jumping throughout the forest, singing of his joy and freedom. His freedom simply happens to consist of a lot of butchering of hapless woodland critters; that is until he sets his sights on bigger prey…

The violence, though bloody, has an insouciant charm throughout as the Woodsman revels gleefully in the massacres he perpetrates. He seems to be sprite-sized, which brings about an effective juxtaposition of his magical, marvelous nature with conventional depictions of faeries, gnomes, elves, and other woodland dwellers, imparting a wonderful sense of transgressive irony.

Originally conceived as a comic book, the film retains much of the comic’s feel and design. The creative irreverence of I Live in the Woods is something I feel the comic form does best, but Winston has successfully made the conversion. Still, certain elements fare better than others.

Visually, the film is top-notch and innovative. The outdoor scenes are fun, and the sets are cool and well-designed. Mr. Winston put up an awesome time-lapse video of his shooting process here. However there was not a lot of content in the comic which to go off of, therefore the narration is a bit sparse. Sometimes it was a poem, with rhyming couplets, other times it was song. Still, at other times, the action took over and there was no narration at all. Stronger writing could have helped tie the story together more effectively, which is important in a story that is so short to begin with.

That shortness is thus the other factor. I most often complain about short films being too long, I Live in the Woods however was too short! That is a compliment of course, I was captivated and enjoying what I saw on the screen so much that I wanted more, but it is also a critique as well. While no amount of padding could have made the Woodsman’s leap into the clouds logical, I felt a little more time with him in the woods would have made the climactic scene more resonant.

Still, we love stop-motion here at Short of the Week, it’s the stubborn little art-form that refuses to die. With young practitioners like Max Winston, may it live long and prosper. See our interview with Max here.