I am so proud of you (Don Hertzfeldt, 2008): USA

Reviewed by Guy Dolev. Viewed at Mann Chinese Theater 6, AFI Film Festival 2009, Hollywood, California.

From the reclusive animator, Don Hertzfeldt from Santa Barbara, California, comes I am so proud of you, the second installment to the planned “life of Bill” trilogy satirizing the life of the American everyman, following chapter one, the widely praised Everything Will Be OK in 2006. The filmmaker’s work has been artistically successful, winning a plethora of significant awards for this film (and others) as well as influencing animators across the spectrum, and working closely with Mike Judge in order to bring a wide range of independent animated films to theaters in the US.

Working principally with black and white, pen and ink drawings, the director achieves a minimalist style that is accentuated by his own bitterly amusing narration, as well as significant excerpts of classical music, ambient sound, composited images and abstract photography, and I am so proud of you is no exception. Exploring the existential suffering of mundane everyday life, the sarcastic and mocking voice of the film speaks an angry truth about sacrificing our valuable existence to things that mean nothing, driven by negative, intangible, unpreventable forces.

In chapter two, the story begins with a school’s field trip to the beach in which Bill’s mentally-challenged brother, whom the other kids don’t know as he rides a special bus to school, is “taught to stand within the confines of a tetherball circle” and chases the sun into the ocean. From there, we see the story of Bill’s dysfunctional family, his father leaving his deranged, over-protective mother, and his grandmother who reckons that she can easily throw Bill into the fireplace. In a psychotic mixture of animation, sounds that feel like one’s brain is being electrocuted and nonrepresentational photography (such as solar flares and shots through unusual transparent materials), we see the grandmother rubbing preserved cat heads on her face, then deciding that they must be of low quality as they don’t seem to have the effect she desired, she procures more of them. The grandmother’s family history is then related in which we learn of her birth in an obscure town in Wyoming where a “mudstorm” had previously drowned all the hogs. The rest of her family is disturbingly religious and die rather unusual deaths, that, no matter how ridiculous, are made out to be unavoidable.

The sardonic look at these religious fanatics is topped by Bill’s adult life, working in an office where he performs inane “tasks” like stacking office equipment to waste time and speaking with a lowbrow philosopher of a co-worker who tells him that since existence is an eternity, that all events have already happened and one’s life is already planned out, “genetics is pretty messed up.” After such a day, Bill returns to contemplate the thousands of raised bumps of the brand of paper towels he bought, while the microwave spins his food. When news of his mother’s death comes to him courtesy of the answering-machine, Bill explores a box in the attic where he finds her medical records and a note that clinically recommends her not to procreate.

With the pointless tasks that Bill does and those which he witnesses others doing (operating a leaf-blower, for instance), torturing his character from life to death, the filmmaker has created a powerful and hilarious philosophical film that seems to reference the existential dilemmas of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Working entirely alone, other than with an editor, Hertzfeldt has created an intelligent, highly artistic sketch of the useless, pathetic nature of everyday activities and the phenomenon of losing ambition somewhere between childhood and adolescence, accentuated further by old-age and death. The director’s style exemplifies a minimalist approach to animated filmmaking that holds its weighty argument beyond the simplistic drawings, instead focusing on telling his cynical stories and allowing the medium to bolster its effect, rather than making the animation itself the center of attention. I am so proud of you is a brilliant, sarcastic look at purpose, expectation and the often disappointing nature of existence.