Short Stop: A weasel finds home in the beautiful and gentle The Drifting Guitar

Short films usually get sorted into three broad categories: live-action, animated, and documentary. These are the three shorts categories at the Oscars, and often a way that festivals program them, as well. Of the three, animated shorts tend to be the shortest. This is due to a lot of factors. Animation can be really expensive and time-intensive. Some shorts are made for kids or designed to play in front of features in theaters, and we know kids have ever-shorter attention spans these days. Yada yada.

So the first thing that caught my attention when I started The Drifting Guitar was the runtime: just north of thirty minutes. As the film started, I found myself thinking, "Thank goodness," because I quickly knew I wanted to spend as much time in this world, and with these characters, as possible.

Directed by Sophie Roze, The Drifting Guitar caught my attention when it won the Short Film Grand Prize at NYICFF. One look at it, and I knew I needed it in my eyeballs. I've said many times before, and I'm sure I'll never stop, but god, I just love stop-motion animation so much. Pretty much any time I'm asked to envision my dream version of some project (say, an adaptation of a book or video game), my mind always goes to stop-motion first and foremost. 

Which is to say, The Drifting Guitar is one of my favorite-looking things I've watched in quite some time, and honestly, maybe ever. It is so beautifully animated, with so much care put into every detail. The characters are so cute, especially when they're sleeping. Every necktie (we'll get to them in a minute) has lovely patterning and movement. The rippling fabric of a fire or the painterly swells of the ocean waves are breathtaking in their creativity and beauty. A particularly striking flashback sequence finds pairs of felt (?) cut-out animals dancing in a forest before disaster strikes. It's one of those movies where it honestly didn't even need to be that strong on a narrative or character level to get me onboard, because I would've been so happy just getting to look at the animation for thirty minutes.

But the care that went into the animation also permeates every other aspect of the film. This is a deeply lovely movie, so gentle and sweet and good down to its bones. Every character who pops up also just generally pops, perfectly played and voiced and animated. Some of them only get a few moments of screentime, but each makes an impression and adds to the overall sense of a big wide world that we're lucky enough to visit. A short film is allowed to be just one thing, one small thing, but that isn't the case here. This is such a textured and thoughtful story, perhaps small in scope and stakes, but it feels immense because of how enchanting and detailed it is.

We follow the utterly adorable Weasel, who is a traveling necktie salesman (there they are). It's not an easy business, because animals don't often have a need for a necktie, despite how dapper they may look when trying them on. One early prospective customer is a turkey who realizes the tie ends up getting covered up by his wattle, so he decides to pass on a sale.

At the start of the film, Weasel is trying to sell his wares at a farm, but -- like the turkey -- none of the animals there are likely customers. So he sets off into the woods, where he meets a friendly hedgehog, which changes everything for him. When asked about home, Weasel says you can't miss something you've never had. But over the course of the film, the definition of home changes for Weasel, and maybe for the viewer as well. It doesn't need to be a place you can go back to. It doesn't need to be an abject you cling to (for Weasel, his suitcase full of ties). Sometimes, it's a person who comes into your life and feels just right, fits into all the cracks and grooves that define you, makes you feel safe and whole and, maybe most importantly, happy.

The way this all plays out is delightful, low-key, full of lovely music. The eponymous guitar was traded to Weasel for a necktie on one of his previous journeys, and while he doesn't know how to play, it becomes a key item in his life, and in his ever-growing circle of friends. I won't say much more about where the film goes, because there are so many lovely turns and surprises that warrant being seen for themselves, but I'll just say that the final moments moved me to tears. 

Different tears than the ones I wanted to shed every time we got a shot of the characters sleeping, because -- oh my god -- they look so stinking cute when they're curled up, asleep! Yeah, I love this movie.