Rob Munday
As children we all face defining moments, those times where we feel challenged to test our courage, intelligence or just plain common sense. Personally, I remember a few of these, the most distinct being my first ever rollercoaster – Shockwave. Unlike the young protagonist, Eviah, in Uri Lotan’s outstanding animated short Black Slide, I didn’t have a lot of time to consider my first white-knuckle ride, as sometimes it’s the waiting, and the anxiety that comes with it, that really gets you.
From the opening shot of Black Slide – a meticulously detailed waterpark scene – you know you’re in for a treat. Following Eviah and his pushy friend as they sneak onto the infamous flume that gives the short its title, there’s instantly an evocative, nostalgic feel to the film that immerses you in its world. As peer pressure convinces our adolescent lead to confront something he’s obviously fearful of, we start to understand this isn’t all that’s going on in Eviah’s world, there’s a bigger and much more worrying challenge ahead.
The opening shot of Black Slide immerses its viewers in its world and sets the standard for its impressive aesthetic.
It’s this layered approach to the storytelling where Black Slide really feels like it reaches another echelon, serving up not one, but two defining moments for young Eviah and hitting us with a double whammy blow where we feel both relief and devastation. It’s an emotional journey and one, unfortunately, influenced by Lotan’s own experiences:
“The film is inspired by a chapter of my own life, of losing my mother to cancer at the age of 12. On the day she passed away, I was with my best friends at our local waterpark, I remember the haunting feeling that something terrible was bound to happen. I wanted to make a film about that, and explore how the painful memory of my mother has become over the years intercut and mingled with the fun and childish day in the waterpark.”
Black Slide’s narrative works without knowing this personal angle and although the story behind a story should never be an important factor when choosing films for S/W, hearing Lotan talk about the devastating loss of his own mother it’s hard not to feel the emotional impact of his storyline even harder. “The story is very personal to me, but I wanted to leave room for the viewer to interpret the film and its message according to their own life and experiences”, the writer/director explains and it’s obvious he gave this a lot of thought when sculpting his film. The water slide rites-of-passage is the universal hook, while the themes of grief and loss will hit a note for anyone who has lost a loved one and make them feel “just a little less alone”.
“The characters were carefully designed to move in a puppet-like manner and display details such as fingerprints on the face” – Lotan on the stop-motion feel of his 3D animation
If Black Slide impresses with the complexity of its storytelling, then its aesthetic takes it to another level altogether. Again, from its opening shots you quickly understand the love and attention than has gone into its design. A 3D animation with a tactile stop-motion feel isn’t anything new, but Lotan’s is one of the best I’ve ever seen. The textures of objects look hand-sculpted, with the director admitting he wanted it to appear “as if a puppeteer had left a mark on them”. The addition of fingerprints here and there, especially on Eviah’s face, is a genius move, like Lotan has put a personal stamp on these elements of his story – one I found inexplicably moving.
One of the 15 films shortlisted for the Best Animated Short Film Oscar, Black Slide combines an accessible aesthetic, which appeals to both general audiences and animation lovers, with an emotive, layered storyline that should grab the attention of the Academy voters. It’s a film that you could imagine being of interest to Pixar lovers and festival fans alike and for that reason it’s one to keep an eye on when the Oscar nominations are announced on January 24th.