Harvie Krumpet
2003 · 22m · Australia
Directed by Adam Elliot
Genres: animation, dark comedy, drama
Tones: darkly comic, melancholic, tender
The tragicomic life story of Harvie Krumpet, a Polish-Australian man saddled with Tourette's syndrome, chronic bad luck, and menial jobs, who nonetheless meets every misfortune with stubborn optimism and a homemade book of 'fakts'. Narrated by Geoffrey Rush.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Everyone expects stop-motion to be whimsical; Elliot weaponizes it against sentiment instead, making plasticine Tourette's tics and lightning strikes land like documentary gut-punches—it's perverse in exactly the right way.
A formally immaculate integration of medium and subject: the plasticity of the material mirrors Harvie's malleable resilience, while the deadpan narration and precise editing situate this within a lineage of biographical animation that takes itself seriously as literature.
The decision to let the Tourette's tics animate organically through the clay itself—jittering, ungoverned—rather than using it as punchline is what elevates this from clever concept to something genuinely moving on a shoestring.
Reviews
Both fondly evocative and uproariously funny.
Hilarious, moving and wonderful — a melancholy short that doesn't put a foot wrong.
Festivals
- Academy Awards 2004, Winner
- Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2003, Grand Prix