The End of the World in Four Seasons
1995 · 12m · Canada
Directed by Paul Driessen
Genres: animation, experimental, musical
Tones: contemplative, surreal, theatrical
Eight interlocking animated tales play out simultaneously in separate windows to Vivaldi's Four Seasons. Paul Driessen uses the changing seasons to structure the overlapping stories.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Driessen's been doing split-screen simultaneity since the '70s, so this feels like the respectable version of a formal experiment—competent, sure, but I wanted it to break something, not just prove it could juggle Vivaldi.
A masterclass in structural constraint as creative engine: Driessen harnesses the Four Seasons concerto as both scaffold and thematic mirror, allowing eight separate narratives to breathe in counterpoint—this is what happens when a formal lineage (animation, musical structure, cyclical time) becomes a filmmaker's native language.
The real lift here is the editing decision to let all eight windows play at once without hierarchy—any filmmaker could have chosen sequential or nested, but Driessen trusts the viewer's eye enough to distribute attention equally, and that single choice transforms Vivaldi from score into compositional partner.