A Chairy Tale
1957 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Norman McLaren, Claude Jutra
Genres: animation, comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, theatrical, whimsical
A young man tries to sit on a chair that dodges and resists him. The pair slip into a dance-like struggle set to sitar and tabla.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
McLaren takes the surrealist joke—man versus inanimate object—and refuses to wink at it, which is almost boring until you realize the refusal IS the subversion; everyone else would've cut to the punchline by frame three.
A masterwork of constraint and iteration: two elements (man, chair) in pure formal dialogue, each movement precisely calibrated, sitars anchoring what could've been throwaway gag into something approaching dance philosophy—this is how you build a tradition.
The genius move is treating the chair with the same weight and agency as the performer—every dodge and pivot is animated with such deliberate personality that the struggle becomes genuinely ambiguous about who's resisting whom, and that single choice makes nine minutes feel inevitable.