An Oscar-Successful Animation of Ernest Hemingway’s “The Outdated Guy and the Sea” Painted on 29,000 Frames of Glass

Ernest Hemingway’s roman­tic adven­ture of guy and mar­lin, The Outdated Guy and the Sea, has in line with­haps spent extra time on highschool contemporary­guy Eng­lish learn­ing lists than any oth­er paintings of fic­tion, which may lead one to think about the nov­el as younger grownup fic­tion. However past the ebook’s abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate vast subject matters of in line with­se­ver­ance, braveness, and loss, it has an attraction that still succeed in­es outdated, wiz­ened males like Hemingway’s San­ti­a­pass and younger, imag­i­na­tive boy­ish appren­tices like his Mano­lin. The 1952 novel­los angeles rein­vig­o­rat­ed Hemingway’s occupation, gained him a Pulitzer Prize, or even­tu­al­ly con­tributed to his Nobel win in 1954. And success­i­ly for all the ones highschool Eng­lish stu­dents, Hemingway’s sto­ry has lent itself to a few wor­thy display adap­ta­tions, includ­ing the 1958 movie megastar­ring Spencer Tra­cy because the inde­fati­ga­ble Span­ish-Cuban fish­er­guy and a 1990 ver­sion with the mighty Antho­new york Quinn within the function.

One adap­ta­tion that learn­ers of Hem­ing­manner may omit is the ani­ma­tion above, a co-pro­duc­tion with Cana­di­an, Russ­ian, and Japan­ese stu­dios cre­at­ed via Russ­ian ani­ma­tor Alek­sander Petrov. Win­ner of a 2000 Acad­e­my Award for ani­mat­ed quick, the movie has as a lot attraction to a spread of view­ers old and young as Hemingway’s ebook, and for probably the most identical causes—it’s cap­ti­vat­ing­ly shiny depic­tion of lifestyles at the sea, with its lengthy peri­ods of inac­tiv­i­ty and quick bursts of maximum phys­i­cal exer­tion and con­sid­er­ready chance.

Each states professional­vide plentiful oppor­tu­ni­ties for com­plex char­ac­ter devel­op­ment and wealthy sto­ry­telling in addition to excit­ing white-knuck­le sus­pense. Petro­v’s movie illus­trates all of them, open­ing with pictures of San­ti­in the past’s sto­ries of his sea­a ways­ing boy­hood off the coast of Africa and stag­ing the dra­mat­ic con­assessments between San­ti­a­pass, his “broth­er” the mar­lin, and the sharks who consume his prize.

However the professional­duc­tion right here, not like Hemingway’s spare prose, makes a daz­zling dis­play of its tech­nique. For his The Outdated Guy and the Sea, Petrov—most effective considered one of a hand­ful of ani­ma­tors professional on this artwork—handpainted over 29,000 frames on glass (with assist from his son, Dmitri) the use of slow-dry­ing oils. Petrov moved the paint along with his fin­gers to cap­ture the transfer­ment within the subsequent shot, and whilst the magazine­i­cal impact resem­bles a mov­ing paint­ing, the shoot­ing itself used to be very tech­no­log­i­cal­ly complex, involv­ing a spe­cial­ly con­struct­ed motion-cap­ture cam­generation. Petrov and son started their paint­ing in 1997 and fin­ished two years lat­er, tak­ing to center probably the most courses of the ebook, it sort of feels. The movie’s cre­ators, how­ev­er, fared wager­ter than The Outdated Guy’s professional­tag­o­nist, wealthy­ly praise­ed for his or her strug­gle. In addi­tion to an Oscar, the quick gained awards from BAFTA, the San Diego Movie Fes­ti­val, and a hand­ful of oth­er pres­ti­gious inter­na­tion­al bod­ies.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

William Faulkner’s Overview of Hemingway’s The Outdated Guy and the Sea (1952)

Watch a Hand-Paint­ed Ani­ma­tion of Dostoevsky’s “The Dream of a Ridicu­lous Guy”

Hem­ing­manner, Fitzger­ald, Faulkn­er: A Loose Yale Path

The Nice Gats­via Is Now within the Pub­lic Area and There’s a New Graph­ic Nov­el

Josh Jones is a creator and musi­cian based totally in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness