A man excitedly slides on the ice in the middle of a bustling town square early on in Daniel Kreizberg’s emotionally absorbing animated short film, anyone lived in a pretty how town. He exudes joy as his own laughter fills the air around him as those around him look at him in near judgement. They are too busy on their phones or lost in their own business. You sometimes don’t recognize unbridled joy until after you experience it. Witness it, and that singular purity is viewed askance more and more as technology consumes us. Kreizberg’s film is an exuberant experience to behold. It will touch everyone in a completely different way.
The color blue sunk into me as the seasons pass throughout this film, but other colors might resonate with other viewers. The seasons seem to change with such fleeting delicacy that we seem to not notice their transition. “Anyone” is the name of a young man whose eyes are lifted forward and upward. His life, it seems, has a forward trajectory, and he does not succumb to the little glowing screens glued to the hands of the other citizens of his small town. “Noone” is the only one whose gaze mirrors Anyone’s; “she laughed his joy she cried his grief/bird by snow and stir by still/anyone’s any was all to her” is the text from E. E. Cummings’ prose that Kreizberg uses to beautifully illustrate what it is like to give yourself over to someone else.
Cummings’ words are matched with such gentle enthusiasm by the voice of the late Jane Goodall. Kreizberg’s film matches that gentleness in every way, as if to signal to a preciousness of life that we take for granted. This world–the world that Goodall chronicled and loved so dearly–will be here much longer after we are gone. On a personal note, I always comment about how quickly a year goes by. When you’re younger, you anticipate the seasons changing in how it relates to school or summer vacation or time with your family. The older you get, the more you want everything to slow down.
I love how Kreizberg uses his palette in such an ambitious way. The colors flood the screen and merge and morph into one another in honor of Cummings’ poem. Towards the end of the film, the night sky blankets this small town before the camera pulls back and the seasons evolve again. Lush greenery gives way to brisk winds and falling leaves before transforming to frigid snow. What a beautiful world we belong to–why can we not celebrate its beauty?
anyone lived in a pretty how town does a curious thing in how it taps into something so personal as it celebrates this vastness of the world. In the creation of this film, Kreizberg celebrates many people along the way. The music used in this short is the final work of his father, Yakov Kreizberg, a renowned conductor whose legacy began when he learned to play the piano at the tender age of five. It’s stunning to see how this filmmaker has mounted a film that speaks so much to our loneliness, our passion, and our connection.
This is a film that will feel wholly different every time you watch it, especially at different stages of your life. The most courageous thing we can all do is be ourselves, and Kreizberg’s film is a testament to that ideal.
