Story from North America
2007 · 5m · USA
Directed by Garrett Davis, Kristen Lepore
Genres: animation, comedy, musical
Tones: absurdist, surreal, tender
A boy asks his father to kill a spider; instead dad launches into an increasingly deranged folk song about the sanctity of all life.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A folk song about not killing a spider becomes a five-minute philosophical argument with the universe, delivered with full hand-drawn sincerity — the absurdism is the deepest thing in the room.
Garrett Davis and Kirsten Lepore wrapping a genuinely cosmic moral argument inside a children's song with total earnestness — an internet-era miniature that has aged into something close to a folk artifact. The earnestness is the trick and it still works.
Cosmic moral argument about killing a spider delivered as a deranged children's folk song with total earnestness — Garrett Davis's music is the entire vehicle. Five minutes that has lived in heads since 2007 for a reason.