I recently arrived at my sixth decade of life, an unexpected joy given my birth with a diagnosis few survived when I was born and even fewer attained anything resembling a quality of life.
I thought of this joy in life often throughout Daniel Kreizberg's emotionally immersive eight-minute animated short anyone lived in a pretty how town, a film inspired by the words of e.e. cummings and a film brought vividly to life by animation that feels as if we've surrendered and surrendered and surrendered again.
We begin our journey in a wintry town square, one man's joy somehow radiating in this square where he is surrounded by others distracted by technology and themselves, alienation and a lack of awareness of the wonder that surrounds them.
This man is anyone. There is a woman, no one, who takes delightful in his joy and whose sense of surrender complements his almost otherworldly glow.
Indeed, anyone lived in a pretty how town is a simple yet emotionally resonant film that will touch all who surrender to it. Its color palette bathes us in this cinematic tapestry. Its language, the language of Cummings, resonates and is brought warmly and lovingly to life by the late Jane Goodall.
One can easily see why Goodall was so completely drawn to this short film and the story it tells.
Kreizberg directs as if he knows he has magic here, a personification of warmth bringing to life words that have lingered in our hearts and minds for decades. If there is a great achievement for anyone lived in a pretty how town, it's that Kreizberg has given us visual imagery to help us manifest in our hearts these words.
The love is real. The tenderness is palpable.
On an equally touching note, the music featured in the short film is that of the late Yakov Kreizberg, the filmmaker's own father and a renowned conductor whose life of beautiful music ends with this magnificent work weaving together of our loneliness, reaching out, connection, and love.
Continuing on its indie fest journey, anyone lived in a pretty how town is a film destined to linger in the heart and in the mind long after the closing credits have scrolled by and the theater lights have been brought up. If you get a chance to check it out, I most assuredly recommend you do so.
Written by Richard Propes
The Independent Critic
