So let's start out with the inspiration here, which is not a spoiler since it's all over the previews and PR for this little vignette: the real-life Halifax explosion of 1917, which was the largest artificial explosion in the history of the world until the atomic bomb was developed and tested. It was a cataclysm that has defined Halifax in some ways ever since, both for the stories of shared hardship and survival and the many little stories -- perhaps apocryphal -- that have spun out of it.
In this particular case, the inspiration was the story of a sailor (the first officer of a cargo ship, in real life, a regular swabbie in this film) who was blown by the explosion quite far, landing with his clothes entirely off. In real life, a number of people were blown far and survived, thanks to the curvature of the hills around Halifax providing landing zones at just the right part of the arc of their flight, although perhaps not so far as the tag on the film suggests.
Exactly true or not, doesn't really matter. In fact, the question as to whether he's alive or dead is central to how to read the film. It's an imagistic montage of life, death, and the universe, not a story per se, a kind of cross between "Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and the final sequence from "2001: A Space Odyssey" with a touch of that old staple of math class, "Powers of Ten" thrown in.
The animation is lovely and engaging, and the sense of jeopardy is heightened by the literal exposure of the sailor having his clothes blown off (tastefully but anatomically correct in its depiction, nota bene for the squeamish).
The film is in parts that mirror the flight of something blown by an explosion; in the middle is a sort of hanging moment, where the viewer is in mid-air, and whether there will be a second half or a "happy" resolution is very much uncertain. Very nice filmmaking.
This was our second favorite, but among the members of our party who saw it, we differed on the best of the five Oscar nominees, and if we'd used ranked choice voting, this would have come out the winner.
In any event, kudos to the filmmakers for this little gem.
