Wednesday with Goddard
2016 · 4m
Directed by Nicolas Ménard
Genres: animation, comedy, experimental
Tones: absurdist, darkly comic, whimsical
A man's deadpan quest for spiritual enlightenment leads him through romance and despair in a series of absurdist verbal and visual gags.
Picked by Felix
The scouts
A man chasing enlightenment through gags that actively resist making sense—Ménard's committed to the bit so hard he makes spiritual crisis *funny*, which is exactly the kind of subversive absurdism that makes you uncomfortable before you realize you're laughing.
The film situates itself in a lineage of Godardian disruption (the title isn't subtle), but what's curious is how precisely the editing cuts between deadpan performance and visual non-sequiturs—there's real formal awareness in how it destabilizes expectation.
The entire movie hinges on a single decision: treating the protagonist's spiritual desperation with complete flatness, no emotional scaffolding, which somehow makes every absurdist left-turn land harder than it has any right to.
Reviews
Silly, absurdist, but nonetheless meticulous, Wednesday With Goddard is Menard's latest film, and was awarded as the top animation at SXSW last week. Always a singularly gifted design talent, Wednesday With Goddard is perhaps evidence of Ménard's maturation into a world-class storyteller.
This wonderfully whimsical animated short will most definitely boggle your mind, or at least make you question everything. Even if it is confusing, the moment I watched this I was in love with it and wanted to share it with everyone else.
Festivals
- SXSW Film Festival 2017, Top Animation