The Moon and the Son: An Imagined Conversation (Oscar 2005)

John Canemaker uses a dazzling array of animation styles and techniques, from black and white photographs to colorful childish drawings and much, explores the difficult emotional terrain of father/son relationships as seen through Canemaker's own turbulent relationship with his father.
It creates a wonderful mix between the reality and the dream, a true person and his image and for the director, between the desire of rediscovering his childhood and the fear about it. It's very sad as the father died before the film was made and it's strange what someone who didn't talk can say to his child and how love can impersonate itself in our lives and stories.



He made this film to resolve long-standing emotional issues he has with my late father. He wanted to find answers to our difficult relationship, to understand the reasons his father was always a feared figure in his childhood, why his father was always angry and defensive, verbally and physically abusive, and often in trouble with the lawuses.
The drawings are really simple but there's so much emotion and creativity that you go out of this film deeply moved and absolutely fascinated. It's the kind of film which makes you want to make animated films, thinking that it's something great and making you think something you didn't think before : animated films can be sometimes more powerful than any other films.
It is a very unusual perspective on The American Dream across all of the 20th century as it swings back and forth from bitter and cynical to loving and almost forgiving.

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