Dear Mr. Petrov
Dear Mr. Petrov,
I saw your recent film For Love at the 2007 Annecy Festival. It made me sad. You are a man with great artistic talent. The oil paint on glass using your fingertips…i mean..that’s something special. You are a rare breed in this world of animation.
Sadly this talent is continually wasted on trite, sentimental stories that might have had meaning in the 19th century but speak to very few people here in the 21st century. Your films look like they were shot with actors and then traced over. I understand that you dont do this, but so why the need/desire/obsession to recreate the ‘real’ word? Why not just make a live action film if all you’re going to do is attempt for realism? Your frames are so utterly unimaginative and bland that they seem more like the hallmark kitsch my mom has in her living room than relevant modern art.
I have the impression that you have boycotted sending your work to Ottawa. Thank you. It saves us both a lot of trouble.
I hope that one day you decide to step out of this illusory middle class 19th century Russian society that you never tasted but continue to long for like a man out of time.
Sincerely,
Chris Robinson
June 26th, 2007 at 5:18 pm e
Ouch! When you put the boot in you don’t hold back!
I saw the film last week at the Melbourne Animation Festival where it was awarded the best of the festival award. I have seen a couple of Petrov films Old man and the sea etc. I did enjoy them a lot but mainly from the stand point that I was admiring the work of each beautiful hand painted frame. That was a few years back and my opinion of animation has changed. It is now that if you can do a story live action then do it live action. Animated films should have something about them that couldn’t be done in live action (of course with computers, green screen , motion capture etc the line has been well and truely blurred).
So I was expecting another story like old man & the sea. Beautiful but why not do it live action? However I was surprised by this film which had a lot more dream sequences and inherently “animated” scenes.
I loved this film. The old story while sentimental suited the technique plus I am intrigued by Russian culture so I am biased anyway
And why not do historical stories? They can still have relevance today and I think this film captured perfectly the rapture , confusion and heart break of a first love that I think is universal and people can empathise with.
Cheers
Neil
July 6th, 2007 at 6:55 pm e
is because that way of thinking that crap like Shrek become succesful.
Animation is a medium. It doesn’t need to be special. It is special by default! why not attempt a real-story like movie with it?! look at Satoshi Kon’s films. Yeah they can be made with actors but why not with animation? the result is awesome.
I saw The old man & the sea and I loved it. I don’t see why this one not. The world doesn’t revolve around shrek and pixar. There’s more than it.
July 6th, 2007 at 11:59 pm e
Hey there. Just wondering about something: do you agree with Brad Bird’s belief that animation is not a genre?
If you do, then you’re a hypocrite, so I’m assuming you don’t (I hope the logic there should be clear enough).
It seems that you expect a clear separation between a live-action and an animated film, and you can’t handle it when you see the two techniques mixed. The fact of the matter is, they are both cinema. Why the different standards for animation versus everything else? Would it surprise you to learn that Yuriy Norshteyn studied the film theory books of Sergei Eisenstein?
Petrov’s work has also been criticized by his own colleagues in Russia (many of them consider “The Cow” to be his best film), but not for the direct reasons that you’ve brought up. Norshteyn criticized the film for lack of depth, economy and subtlety in critical moments - for virtuosity in places where something more subdued would have had a greater effect.
Your two main criticisms strike an odd note to me, though. Firstly, you seem to dislike realism and romanticism. In that sense, you are a product of your environment - it is not trendy in the West to like those movements, and the only people who might admit to it are the art historians who study them. If you asked them, perhaps they would tell you that there are some things which neither photography nor more primitive (simplified, stylized) art styles can replicate. Even in the “realistic” sections in his films, Petrov emphasizes and exaggerates in a way that brings attention to certain things which wouldn’t stand out in simple live-action filming.
As for your objection to his adaptation of a 1927 work of literature - telling Russians to forget their 19th/early 20th-century literature is a bit like telling the English to forget that Shakespeare ever existed, or telling a typical animator to forget anything that Walt Disney did. For better or for worse, it is a source of pride and an entrenched part of Russia’s cultural landscape. You can say that it is irrelevant to you, but perhaps that’s less true than you realize for other people.
September 23rd, 2007 at 5:33 am e
I have no problems with his adapting stories that could have been told in live action. The mere fact that they’re animated is enough of a difference for me. They are thought out differently by the filmmaker, so we have to think of them differently than we would a live action film.
My problem is with the artwork. It’s so pedestrian. The art he’s creating would make for a third rate 19th Century impressionist. In truth there is no “Art” there. Just animated “paintings”.
Thank you , Chris Robinson, for speaking out about Petrov’s work. I’ve only heard simpering supporters that are ready to dole out another Oscar for what I see as mediocre - though labor intensive - work. It’s nice to read another voice - especially one that agrees with me.
October 13th, 2007 at 10:23 pm e
Petrov’s film “My love” is a kitch. And it is not only because of the artwork. It is because of the fact, that it is based of one the worst ever Russian writers, a writer that can simply be named as a part of a new Putin Russian dictatorial regime of the pseudo moral refusal of the humans in praise of the national doctrines. I tried to watch it 3 times. And I was going out of the screening every time, when the head protagonist was going to church ( as I know very well Russian, I can tell You, the text is awful ) The Petrov’s film serves very well the neo-totalitarian autodafes of Sorokin, Limonov, and Erofeev books in Russia. The winning of the kitsch over the art. Well done Petrov!
September 6th, 2008 at 7:09 am e
I totally agree on all Chris says about Petrov, and I am specially amused also by Theodore’s comment.
But in fact Petrov is just the extreme example for a general situation, namely that animation festivals often seem to be something like the last refugee for artists denying the developements in post/modern art.
It seems that most interesting artists in moving image nowadays prefer galleries and museums, and leave the cinema for the more old-fashioned conceptions.
February 2nd, 2009 at 6:47 pm e
Asking someone to “step out” of themselves makes very little sense to me. Petrov makes films of stories that speak personally to him. If he were to change himself to please people like you, he’d simply be lying to us and himself.
I’m rather baffled by the claim that Petrov is “striving for realism.” He’s doing nothing of the sort. There is no logical way for Petrov to accomplish in live action what he does in animation, unless you can find a seamless way to turn mountains into a herd of elephants.
Petrov is indeed making animated paintings, each of which fails to live up to masters like Claude Monet. It doesn’t matter whether they do or not. Chuck Jones once said that if select drawings dominate the action, then it is not good animation. What matters is that Petrov makes these images move so well.
Let me conclude by saying “interesting” is probably the greatest insult one can level at a work of art that isn’t blatantly negative. When an artist makes something “new,” it soon dies if all it has going for it is “interest.” What matters is whether it has that something going for it. Howard Hawks remains a great film director despite all the movements since his career. But who the hell wants to watch Wavelength? It’s certainly more interesting than The Big Sleep, but that’s not going to make it enjoyable.
I’m not always a fan of Petrov’s work. My Love struck me as superficial, to be honest. That’s perfectly fine, he doesn’t have to change a damn thing to suit my tastes, just as Ralph Bakshi shouldn’t change himself despite my dislike for his work. Old Man and the Sea, however, is as breathtaking a masterpiece of animation as many of Frederic Back’s works. Petrov makes the work he wants to make, the work that speaks to his own soul. We’ve no right to tell him different.