Strong film rec: Ёжик в тумане (Hedgehog in the Fog, 1975) · 6:30pm Jun 19th, 2021
Great Russian authors have a reputation for being wordy. Yuri Norstein, director of Ёжик в тумане (Hedgehog in the Fog), is not. There are words, and they are important; but there aren't many. It's a 10-minute stop-motion-and-animation film "about" a hedgehog lost in fog. But like Tony Earley said and I stole, "A story is about a thing and another thing." In a poll of 140 animators at the 2003 Laputa Animation Festival for the best animated films of all time, it ranked #1.
(Though, honestly, that list isn't going to please anybody; it's a mix of the historically important, the artsy, and the popular, with an extra helping of anime. The #2 animation, Skazka skazok (The Tale of Tales), was also Russian, and is also worth seeing. It seems to have been taken down from YouTube.)
It was produced as a film for children, but it's more mature, and respectful of the viewer's intelligence, than most films made for adults. I'm tempted to call it a musical, because the music is continuous throughout, and important--the sound is tightly integrated with the story--but it has no lyrics. It's a great example of how to combine words, visuals, music, and plot--yes, I say it has a plot, fight me--to tell an efficient and compelling story.
It is artsy. You can take it as an allegory, and the "allegory" bears more weight than the literal story does. But it isn't a crappy allegory like Pilgrim's Progress or Snowpiercer, where the allegory is a cheat to conceal the weakness of its argument. And if you take it as an allegory, you'll probably waste a lot of time asking "What does the horse stand for?", which I think will be different for everyone.
If you must take it as an allegory, I think "what does the fog stand for?" (and the jam, too) is a better question. But I don't quite see it as an allegory. An allegory is a metaphorical mapping of things and events from one world onto different things and events in another, like Snowpiercer maps free-market economies onto a train full of oppressive totalitarian thugs and victims forever going nowhere in circles around a dead frozen planet. Hedgehog is more like a metonymical mapping: The things in the "bigger world" that the story is "really about" aren't things at all, but general categories of life experience. The things in the film's literal world are
particular examples, in the Hedgehog's life, of these general categories.
(A little googling shows that there's a new literary term for use when you can't decide whether a story uses metaphor or metonymy: metaphtonymy. So this movie is metaphtonymic.)
You can find a quick summary of it on Wikipedia, and analyses of it on YouTube and IMDB.
What do you think of it? What would you say it's "about"?
I dont get it, but the style of animation and the "shaky cam" aspects are pretty cool to watch.
Very cozy animation; I particularly liked the horse. Obviously with the fog and the things in it, it was very much "about" the unknown... or rather AN unknown. The conclusion left a lot to mull over, but with the reflection of the stars in the water, and the Hedgehog being carried by the current, I think I can say that--at least in part--the unknown doesn't just lead you astray.
Still not sure about the jam, though.
Overall, it's a fascinating animation to watch, and after some thought, genuinely fun to consider.
Hm, I'm pretty low on time right now, but I might take a look later; thanks.
Huh. Well, that was indeed a rather curious film. Interesting art style. And plot.
I'm not sure I have much more of a concrete critique at the moment, but it feels like there's a lot of meaning potentially layered into it, aye.
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One reviewer thought that the jam represented the things we think we need. Interesting, though then I think getting something else equally good or better, instead of finally getting your thing back, would be a better sequence.
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It's easier to understand knowing that fog is really just low-hanging cloud.
It's about someone that gets stuck with their head in the clouds thinking about horses. At first, they find everything fascinating, but once they realize where they are, they're terrified. They're conflicted by the juxtaposition of being lost and the intense sense of harmony. (That's the tree.) Eventually, the show ends, and they feel like they're suffocating. After some time, they give in to resignation and just drift through life. They slip back into a normal routine, but they can't stop thinking about horses.
Hm, I'll be honest, I couldn't tell what it meant when I watched it. And reading comments and reviews (YouTube and elsewhere), it seems no one can agree on what any of its elements might mean. I suppose the conclusion to draw would be Norstein's intent was for viewers to find their own meaning, but I don't think this is the case. I can't say it has no meaning, because I do believe there is one. Rather, my theory is there's nothing symbolically concrete behind any of the elements--the horse, the bat, the fog, etc. Instead, I think Norstein was trying to convey a feeling, or several, and perhaps people are mistaking the emotional effect and trying to attach it to specific individual elements, like the horse, or the owl.
Two reviewers I think hit on this (their thoughts are what helped form my opinion here):
I like these interpretations, because they don't hinge on any specific symbolism of the creatures or the plot, but instead take it as a whole. Instead of a horse it could have been a deer, instead of an owl a fox, and the overall impact would be the same (perhaps--I guess I'm arguing function trumps form here, and I don't know for certain that's the case). I also like them because I feel you can justify these interpretations using the whole film, whereas everyone's opinion on, say, what the fish symbolizes is equally valid, since the story offers (as far as I can tell) nothing to concretely define it. Long story short, they just strike me as being more true than everything else I read (which to be fair wasn't very in-depth. Most weren't more specific than it's profound, eerie, mysterious, beautiful, etc)
I think this film is an example of enchanting the mundane, which is what I think art is really good at. Taking normal elements and extracting profound meaning from them, or with them, rather than trying to take profound elements and creating profound meaning. Another example of this is the early seasons of pony. The all-important and talented Twilight wasn't all-important but rather a student who lived in a tree, and her equestria-saving friends in a small village. A humble setting and cast, and yet the show was able to convey deep meaning. Later Twilight became a princess and all-important and lived in a giant crystal castle, but the show became less meaningful and more vapid (imo).
Anyway, I have a theory that had the ending of the film been happier--had the hedgehog immediately gotten over his journey and settled into enjoying the night with his friend--that almost no one would think the film is as meaningful as they do. This isn't a knock against it, or against anyone; I just mean to make a point about how impactful I think endings can be. I thinks it's the dazed, traumatized reaction of the hedgehog at the end as his friend chats away that indicates to viewers the film was about more than what appeared on its surface.
But, again, I'm not certain.
Edit:
Oh, I almost forgot: if you liked Hedgehog in the Fog, you may find interesting another, longer animated film called Fantastic Planet. I've only watched the first five minutes, so I can't attest to its quality, but this made me think of it.
There are free versions on YouTube as well, though you may have to rely on the auto-generated captions.
Well, obviously, if he went into the tree he'd have to fight Hedgehog Vadar, but they didn't get to that on this play-through.
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Thanks for that long and thoughtful comment! Somehow I didn't find it until now.