Eishändler

Take the drawing style of Ed Gorey, the sensibility of doom of Abner Dean, and the Sysyiphean zeitgeist of, oh, a filmmaker working in Communist-era Eastern Europe, and you'll have an approximate idea of the feel of Ice Merchants.

I'd warn you that any description of the plot would be full of spoilers, but the IMDB tagline itself is full of spoilers! My advice is to watch this cold, without any particular description of the plot, for best effect. You'll get a very deftly done, real sense of jeopardy for the characters, as well as experiencing the strangeness of the whole premise as one is meant to.

It's a parable for loss and recovery, grief and holding on to love, but wordless and without engaging in sentimentality. There's a reasonably nice revelation with a laugh out loud moment as we see something decidedly inexplicable and seemingly extraneous come in at the end. It's really quite touching, and again, if I explained the plot even a little bit, you'd likely lose the emotional sense that this film very adeptly creates.

This was not my first choice among the Oscar nominees for best short animation (we saw them all at one sitting) but it's a credible runner-up. If you're not literally on the edge of your seat watching this, I'd be surprised.

It's incredible how a 14 minute movie without a single word can move you this much.

With just simple and repeated scenes, the director manages to get you to know the characters. For that purpose, this movie makes use of color in a simple way that just makes sense. The slow pace just makes it feel natural and there is no rush to achieve the end of the story.

I also loved the soundtrack, every second of it adds to the story and, in the absence of words, acts as a good way to show feelings from the characters.

Loved this movie, and it's good to see it get this much attention, specially the Oscar nomination.

So simple, so beautiful and so meaningful. When I saw their house hanging on the mountain, I thought something would happen to them. Obviously, the man's wife, the child's mother is not alive. It doesn't show it with flashback. Very simple. A yellow glass and an empty side of the bed. Very meaningful and simple. I was expecting a bad ending. But the ending of the movie and the way it was finished impressed me a lot. It was so sweet. Among the ones I've watched (I've only watched 3 nomines yet), this is what I liked and was most impressed with. Also the music was very good. The shooting style is again like hand-drawn. I think it was fashion and style to be nominated for an Oscar. I criticized it. Also, a live action version of it can be shot. We can watch beautiful landscapes.

This short about a father and son living in a tiny cabin anchored on the side of an immense and icy mountain-side cliff is totally absorbing. There is no spoken word but the music is great. Father and son eke out their existence by taking ice to the village far below by jumping off their porch and parachuting down, then they come back up using a rope system. Since I am somewhat acrophobic, parts were a little difficult for me to watch (the son sitting on a swing thousands of feet above the ground - oh my!) but the basic colored line drawings were so engaging and gorgeous that one could not finish the film.

At first the ending is somewhat open to interpretation. Watching it a second and third time I picked up the hints scattered along the way as to what was happening that I had not fully grasped on my first viewing. I so appreciate being able to watch it on The New Yorker Screening Room.

Being able to tell such a story through beautifully simple details is amazing. Ice Merchants is a piece of art like the world needs more of.

The visual art and animation are both provoking and original.

The sound is wonderfully crafted.

The story brought me to tears.

A world where a good short animation like this, created with very little funding, wins an Academy Award is a better one. I really hope it wins.

Also interesting is the fact that ice merchants actually existed, a long time ago, even though that is more of a poetic backdrop to the story being told.

I'm looking forward to author's next creations.