The Soliloquist
2009 · 6m · Taiwan
Directed by Ma Kuang Pei
Genres: animation, experimental, surrealism
Tones: contemplative, melancholic, surreal
A modern fable about the complications of loneliness, fantasy and illusions, told as a single unedited shot simulating the turning of pages in a picture book, growing out of the artist’s own misfortunes in love.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
A picture-book animation that refuses to cut is either a gimmick or a statement, and Pei's decision to trap us in one shot while the loneliness spirals feels less like subversion and more like constraint mistaken for concept—interesting failure, but failure nonetheless.
The single unedited shot becomes a formal argument about time and narrative accumulation, positioning *The Soliloquist* within the lineage of durational cinema and animated fables; Pei's restraint—letting the page-turns do the editing—is the kind of considered craft that lingers in conversation.
The bet here is entirely on the unedited shot itself—one technical choice that forces the animation, the pacing, and the emotional tenor to do all the heavy lifting without the mercy of a cut, and it's that singular decision that transforms a small melancholic fable into something hypnotic.
Reviews
This short film The Soliloquist uses a commentary (subtitles)to narrate the story, as if there is a person talking about a small incident that happened to him. The first-person narrator tells the story subjectively.