Songs and Dances of the Inanimate World: The Subway
1985 · 14m · Canada
Directed by Pierre Hébert
Genres: animation, essay film, experimental
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
Without dialogue, etched drawings follow commuters rushing through underground tunnels, while an elemental, atonal score conveys the alienation and dehumanization of the urban subway.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A 1985 NFB experimental that treats the subway as pure visual rhythm rather than social critique—Hébert's refusing the obvious 'urban alienation' sermon and instead letting etched abstraction and atonal sound *be* the argument, which is genuinely weird enough to work.
Hébert's essay film sits squarely in the structural animation lineage (McLaren, Brakhage) while maintaining rigorous formal discipline: every etched mark and sonic dissonance is deliberate, creating a work that understands itself as part of a decades-long conversation about animation as philosophical instrument.
The decision to use etching itself—raw, scratched, imperfect marks—as the visual language for human bodies in motion is what elevates this: it's a technical choice that makes alienation tactile and visible rather than merely stated, doing conceptual work that justifies every frame.