The Films of Yuri Norstein

 

Animation has always fascinated me, because it opens the doors of cinema beyond the realm of the physical and into the wild abstract. These qualities can be seen in the films of Russian animator, Yuri Norstein, whose work displays a fluid, otherworldly quality. 

His first directorial effort, October 25th, The First Day (1968) is a typical Soviet agitprop animation celebrating the October Revolution. It makes use of cut-outs, and images from Revolution-era agitprop posters, the most recognizable being the "Porky" caricature of a devious capitalist. But this early short displays little of the transcendence of his later work. 

Norstein's second film, which he co-directed with master Russian animator Ivan Ivanov-Vano, The Battle of Kerzhenets (1971) is more mature and innovative. It is ostensibly based on the legend of the city of Kitezh, which disappeared under the water to escape the Mongol invasion, but the film focuses on the poetry and desperation of soldiers in wartime, and the false pride that comes with nationalism (the Virgin Mary appears at the beginning to bless the Russian troops who ultimately die in battle). Using 2D cut-out animation in a variety of perspectives, and set to the music of Rimsky-Korsakov, it is like a great beautiful Russian fresco come alive.

Norstein's next two directorial efforts, The Fox and the Hare (1973) and The Heron and the Crane (1974) represent a transitory period in his career. The former is a straightforward adaptation of the Russian fairy tale, but it shows Norstein experimenting with unique framing devices; many shots are framed by borders that look like they've come out of an illustrated storybook. The Heron and the Crane is really Norstein's first solo masterpiece, and it is the film where he really started experimenting with multiple layers and glass animation. It is a timeless, melancholy tale about the tangled relationships between men and women that's presented as a deceptively simple fairy tale. The extended dance sequence between the Heron and the Crane that takes place in the rain is innovative and, once again, transcendent.

Norstein's last two films to date, Hedgehog in the Fog (1975) and Tale of Tales (1979) are the apotheosis of his career. Hedgehog in the Fog follows the titular hedgehog into a fog-filled nighttime landscape filled with strange creatures. Here, Norstein brings his unique animation techniques to full force. The almost 3-dimensional shot of the tree, and the shot of the white horse, both from ground up, are some of the most unique animated images in cinema. There's an unease about the whole film, which lasts only 10 minutes, but lingers in the memory as being longer. Tale of Tales is Norstein's longest film, and a very particularly Soviet Russian one; it deals with the Soviet Union's historical memory of WWII in a similar manner to Tarkovsky's Mirror (1975), and comes across as obtuse. The symbolism is dense, and the techniques are heavily avant-garde. The use of music is more disjointed and distant than in Hedgehog in the Fog, and recalls the work of Japanese compose Toru Takemitsu. The script was co-written by Lyudmila Petrushevskaya, a Russian writer of weird fiction who reached global renown after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Since 1981, Norstein has been painstakingly working on a feature-length adaptation of Gogol's The Overcoat with a small team of animators. As of 2015, 20 minutes of the film have been completed. There is no doubt that the finished product could be the greatest animated film ever made, but given that Norstein is 81 now, we can only hope he lives to finish it.