Billy's Balloon (1998)

I am now going

 to attempt to

discuss Don

Hertzfelt.

Wish me luck.

I am a colossal fan of Don Hertzfelt. I have been attempting to muster the courage to talk about his work for a long time, and so far I have been unable to figure out how I can do him justice. Consider my review of this short film a practice run for a larger project in the future. I decided to cover this film do it being one of his lesser known early shorts, and also one of his more controversial works. All you need to do is read the comments of the Youtube release of this short (linked at the bottom) to see how it has managed to upset many people.

I do not share the opinion of these people, and I will discuss why later in this review, however for now I will look at the film on it's own terms. The film features the familiar style of animation employed through most of Hertzfelt's films, and I am still amazed by how expressive and funny it can be despite it's simplicity. In my opinion, Hertzfelt has managed to do more to validate stick-figure drawings as an authentic artistic style than Tim Burton did for stop-motion in the 80's and 90's. Hetrzfelt is also notable for his limited use of colour, only colouring objects or characters in for comedic effect or to highlight it's importance. The only element of this film which features colour is the titular balloon, which is bright red.

This leads me to an interesting facet of the film which may have been lost on the various angry commentors on Youtube. This film is a parody, specifically of the classic children's film The Red Balloon (1956). The original film, aside from being a wonderful fantasy adventure for children, is pretty much the epitome of childhood innocence and wonder and in the film, the red balloon acts as a symbol for this. By taking such a simple yet effective symbol of innocence and perverting it, Hertzfelt is able to make something truly hilarious and wrong. Billy's Balloon is a floating tormentor, a sadistic bully and so do to my predisposition to see red balloon's as friendly and innocent in film, the subversion is hilarious.

The humour is aided by the incredibly punchy sound design, which if Hertzfelt himself is to be believed, is one of the most important aspects of his films in his eyes. In this case I would totally agree, as the dark slapstick would simply not work without the quality of those sounds.

Overall I disagree with the assertion that this film is too mean spirited. It exists as a darkly comedic counterpoint to a sweet and heartfelt children's film from the fifties and a hilarious subversion of a symbol of innocence and goodness within the world of film.

Original Video Here

By Jack D. Phillips

A Zoom Film Review