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Harvie Krumpet Harvie Krumpet is an Australian animated short by Adam Elliot using the claymation technique used on movies like Wallace & Gromit. Actually, the comparison is a little misleading, as Nick Park's shorts (and soon to be full length feature) for Aardman Animation are technically extremely sophisticated and complex, which is a description that doesn't really apply to Elliot's work.
Elliot's animation technique is very rudimentary, with many scenes consisting simply of characters blinking. But don't be put off because Harvie Krumpet is a gem of a short, detailing the titular Harvie's birth in Poland to his life and death in Australia. Narrated by Geoffrey Rush, Harvie's life is told in a series of bittersweet episodes, punctuated by "Fakts" that he has learned along the way (such as "The trouble with nude dancing is that not everything stops moving when the music does") which he notes in a little book he keeps tied around his neck.
Harvie has a tragic life, full of death, illness and misfortune (losing a testicle and suffering from Alzheimer's), but keeps an optimistic, simple outlook on life, even when he gets a metal plate in his head which, thanks to a lightening strike, becomes magnetised, attracting nearby metal objects.
Elliot's script is the real joy, and the animation is there to illuminate the words, assisted by Rush's matter of fact, slightly world weary delivery. It's a funny film, but with a streak of darkness shot through with the inevitabilities of life. But thanks to Elliot's gift for encapsulating Harvie's life in a brief, episodic way, we grow to love him. Even as we laugh at his stupidity, naïvity or adversities, we're also laughing with him.
The new DVD release of Harvie Krumpet also comes with some of Elliot's earlier claymation short films: Uncle (1996), Cousin (1998) and Brother (1999) which deliver a similar outlook on life: funny, surreal and dark, with obsessive characters leading pointless existences dotted with tragedy and death. The trio of shorts have an autobiographical feel to them, which even if they are not entirely must draw on Elliot's keen observations of family life.
Simple and easy to digest, Adam Elliot's animations manage to conjure up more humour, poignancy and pathos in a few minutes of screentime than most films achieve over their two hour length.
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