The Apprentice
1991 · 9m · Canada
Directed by Richard Condie
Genres: animation, comedy, fantasy
Tones: absurdist, contemplative, whimsical
An old fool and a young fool meet at a fourteenth-century crossroads where the youth chooses the wrong path. Wordless action teaches consequences through misadventure.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Condie's using medieval morality-play scaffolding to build something genuinely strange—wordless slapstick as philosophical argument, which should be insufferable but somehow isn't. The fact that it works at all is the subversion.
A formally rigorous exercise in visual storytelling that situates itself squarely in the animation tradition of pedagogical fable, where every gesture and consequence carries the weight of considered design. Condie's restraint—no dialogue, no explanation—is the mark of a craftsperson confident in his lineage.
The choice to strip away all sound except ambient noise and let pure physical comedy carry the moral weight transforms what could be twee into something genuinely felt; that decision—trusting the audience to read consequence through movement alone—is what makes this small film matter.