REVIEW: It's Such a Beautiful Day

I remember watching a collection of Don Hertzfeldt's animation several years ago with some friends. It was the absolute most insane thing I'd ever seen and I loved it. The imaginative animation and absurdist humor set Hertzfeldt's work apart from everything else I had seen on the internet at that point. Naturally, when I was browsing Netflix and saw that Hertzfeldt had done an entire movie, I knew I had to see it. Truthfully, I think you should too.

It's Such a Beautiful Day is a feature film comprising of three of Hertzfeldt's short films edited together (Everything Will Be OK, I Am So Proud of You, and It's Such a Beautiful Day). The piece follows the story of Bill, a pencil-drawn stick-man who contemplates his own existence while suffering from a potentially fatal mental illness. That is honestly all I can say about the plot without just recounting the entire movie; at 62 minutes, this isn't a particularly lengthy picture. Not to mention that, aside from the short running time, this is a strange, strange film. 

For the most part, aside from the core concept, it defies description. This enduring surrealism works to both the movie's benefit and detriment at a few moments; one example of the latter that stood out was a gag involving a leafblower at a bus stop. It went on just a tad too long for my taste and, while one could defend this by pointing out that it is meant to illustrate the tedium of Bill's life, the joke takes place far enough into the plot that we're already well aware of just how dull and repetitive things are for our protagonist. 

Thankfully, the good moments outweigh the bad by a good couple of proverbial tons; the humor in this movie is as funny as it is dark. If you don't think you'd laugh at a joke about a little girl who died of Yellow Fever (and also being on fire), then this probably isn't the movie for you. The comedy here is one of the most interesting facets of Beautiful Day; it's so oddball that everyone will take something different away. There are jokes here that will make some people laugh, some people feel sad, and others just scratch their heads. And that's the entire focus of the film; the human condition. What it means to be a person living their life on planet Earth. Just like life, It's Such a Beautiful Day manages to be funny, terrifying, heart-wrenching, utterly baffling, and a million other things over the course of its runtime. Each individual who watches this movie is going to take away something completely unique. We look at Bill's journey and begin to connect pieces of his experience to our own, whether in big ways, small ways, numerous ways, or just one way.

If I had but one thing to say about It's Such a Beautiful Day, it's that it will make you think. It will make you think about life, about death, about the future, about the past, about time itself, about love, and about everything that signifies that you are a member of the human race, orbiting a star on a colossal, blue sphere.
And I think that that's worth something.