Leisure

This most deservedly Oscar-winning animated short from Australia in 1976 starts with a line drawing on white background of a man relaxing by him self. Then we see him working various jobs to achieve his leisure time. Then we go through a history of mixing work and leisure through photographs, paintings, illustrations, and other animated depictions in a collage of images all accompanied by a narrator and some flute and other music from the '70s. A very unique short that deserved its recognition, Leisure seems a wonderful '70s tribute to more innovative art forms of that adventurous decade. If you have Google Video and love animation, I definitely suggest you seek it out there.

This animated film won the 1977 Oscar for Best Animated Short Film--which proves that either 1977 was the worst year in history for animation or the Academy lost its collective mind. I am not just some crank who hates animation--I love animation. No, this crank just happens to like GOOD animation and animation that isn't duller than dust!! The film itself is basically a boring lecture about the advent of leisure time combined with relatively simple animations--some of which are vaguely reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's animations from Monty Python (except the ones in LEISURE are NOT funny). If I want a lecture, I'll either enroll in a college course or read a book. When I watch animation, I want to be amused or amazed or challenged--this film did none of these.

I did quite like the sarcastic and cynical tone of the narration once this got going. It all starts with the caveman who spends much of his time killing it, unless he is off killing something more necessary for food. It's that process that introduces mankind to the cooking process and thence to an industrial one that ultimately created the distinct concepts of work and leisure. The more emancipated people became, the more diverse their requirements became. Might humanity prefer leisure and work to pay for it, or might they enjoy the work and leisure is just a necessary evil? Traditional lines get blurred and definitions of what we like to do become matters for government policy and official ingenuity! There's something engagingly simple about the initial style drawing but thereafter it heads into a busy and rather surreal - almost "Monty Python" - style which I found left me focussing more on what was being said that what I was seeing. Still, it's original in both concept and delivery and though not really for me, is worth ten minutes.

This is just a dull film. It has the glib, pompous narrator who talks about the history of leisure with numerous graphics behind it. The topic could be interesting; this presentation was not. At times it was hard to really see the point of it. The first couple minutes work OK but after that it just sort of drones on..