Ulalume, a ballad
2023 · 7m · Estados Unidos
Directed by Gary D. Rhodes
Genres: animation, drama, fantasy
Tones: contemplative, dark, melancholic
An animated adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe's poem 'Ulalume', which centres on the narrator's loss of his beloved due to her death.
Picked by Margot
The scouts
Poe adaptations are the safe play—everyone expects Gothic melancholy and shadow puppetry—so Rhodes betting everything on fidelity to the source material instead of subversion feels almost cowardly; the film knows exactly what it is and doesn't push back against a single expectation.
Rhodes locates himself squarely in the lineage of literary animation and formal constraint—working from Poe's actual verse structure creates a discipline that elevates the visual composition; this is the kind of purposeful, tradition-aware work that justifies the essay afterward.
The real lift here is the decision to let the poem's rhythm dictate the pacing and timing of the animation rather than underscoring it; that one formal choice—subordinating image to the architecture of language—transforms what could be decorative into something genuinely haunting.