Winner of the 2003 Academy Award for best animated short film, Australian director Adam Elliot's Harvie Krumpet, narrated by Geoffrey Rush, is a deliciously dark clay/model-animated fictional "biography of an ordinary man seemingly cursed with perpetual bad luck." Born in Poland in 1922, the Tourette's-afflicted, half-literate title character finds his parents frozen in the snow after a house fire destroys the family abode, later flees Hitler's blitzkrieg at the dawn of WWII, and ultimately winds up in the backwater burg of Spottswood, Australia, where he continues to write down various nuggets of wisdom in his book of "fakts," while suffering trials and tribulations (including losing a testicle, having a metal plate sewn into his head, and being struck by lightning). But Harvie's life has a few rays of sunshine: he enjoys his adventures in a nudist camp, marries a loving nurse named Val, and the pair adopt a thalidomide baby. Unfortunately, Val drops dead from a brain aneurysm on her 64th birthday, and Harvie develops Alzheimer's, but that's life, right? Walking a fine line between South Park excess and a heartbreaking embrace of humanity with all its flaws and foibles, Harvie Krumpet, which took 14 months to make on a budget of $390,000, is a small tour de force. DVD extras include a director's commentary track, four earlier animated shorts by Elliott (Cousin, Brother, Uncle--a trio of dysfunctional family portraits--and Human Behavioural Case Studies), and a six-minute storyboard featurette. Highly recommended. Aud: P. (R. Pitman)
Harvie Krumpet
(2003) 22 min. DVD: $19.99. StudioWorks Entertainment (avail. from most distributors). Color cover. Volume 20, Issue 1
Harvie Krumpet
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