The Flying Sailor

The Halifax Explosion of 1917 is an established fact, with devastation wrought that raised a hue and cry about spies. Amidst the tragedy, one sailor was found more than a mile from the harbor, naked. The story was that the explosion had ripped his clothes off and blown him about two kilometers, with no harm.

That's one explanation, although I can think of others. In any case, his story was accepted, and this Oscar-nominated short form Canada's National Film Board offers it as a cartoon.

In the past, the Oscar nominees for best animated shorts have been plagued with pieces that could have been done easily as live action. None of this year's fall under that curse, nor the one about "animated radio", a lecture with some pictures. Unfortunately, as beautiful as this is, it's not a story, it's an anecdote.

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.

It's probably just as well that the eponymous sailor is long dead for I don't think he'd be terribly impressed with the body these animators have decided to give him! He is strolling the harbour of Halifax when a sudden explosion as two ships appear to collide propels him up into the air, strips him of his clothes and plonks him down in a tree some 3km from the site. As he travels we are treated to some reminiscences from his young life, his sailing career and as his life flashes before our eyes we enjoy a gently engaging score from Luigi Allemano that helps keep things moving. This isn't my favourite style of animation - I prefer a little more natural proportion, and I gather that in truth he kept his boots on too! It's quite watchable, but entirely forgettable - sorry.

An Oscar-nominated 8-minute animated short film. I said wow. If an 8-minute animated short is nominated for an Oscar, I must watch it. Luckily it's uploaded on Youtube. I watched. I did not like at all. First of all, although the shooting style is different, it is very obvious that they use this style to win "awards". They did it this way to be "cool". The story is very simple. I didn't know anything about Halifax Explosion. My positive opinion about the movie was about this event. I'm going to investigate about this accident. It piqued my interest. But this movie was not good for me. The Oscar nomination was an exaggeration.

This short takes a look at the kind of thoughts that might race through a sailor's head as he was carried through the air by a terrible explosion, such as the one that devastated the Nova Scotian town of Halifax in 1917. You may find yourself scoffing at its claims of truthfulness, but people in Halifax really were picked up by the explosion and deposited kilometers away. In any case, the short is moving and beautiful. Special attention should be paid to the soundscape, which combines a beautiful score with all the sounds a sailor might have heard throughout his life, from his childhood in a grimy port city to the moment two ships collided in a harbour, setting off thousands of tons of explosives.