ME
Written by Andreas Babiolakis
Warning: Potential spoilers for ME are throughout this review. Reader discretion is advised.
Don Hertzfeldt is a genius when it comes to animation, and I don’t think many would disagree with this claim in this day and age. His ability to channel untapped parts of our minds, from the uncomfortable things we accidentally find funny to the private, depressing conversations we have within our own craniums regarding our greatest fears and dreads, is parallel to none. He ushered in a new kind of comedy for the viral, internet age with Rejected. He channeled what it is like to relive one’s life via dying memories in his magnum opus, It’s Such a Beautiful Day. He created a science fiction story of tomorrow when the genre’s well previously felt beyond dried out with World of Tomorrow and its sequel short films. Needless to say, many of us hold Hertzfeldt in a high regard to the point of greatly anticipating what her churns out next, be it a feature length film or even a one minute long short (he can make either work).
His latest release has finally arrived: ME. Well, it has arrived depending on where you live. ME has been touring North America for the past month and had its Toronto premiere yesterday at the iconic Revue Cinema (a relic of the Canadian film scene for over one hundred years; you can sign a petition to try and protect the landmark from being closed by its unruly landlord here). ME has been shown in theatres here and there and its tour continues for only a little while longer. From this point on, it may be tricky to watch ME, unless Hertzfeldt plans on releasing it via physical media or have it be purchasable and rentable online (like the majority of his other films). If you have an opportunity to watch this wild short on the big screen (and with the company of others), do so before the chance is gone (at least to support local theatres and Hertzfeldt with one admission).
So, how does ME fare? Before I get to describing the film and reviewing its quality, there’s something important to note because it heavily pertains to the end result of this twenty-two minute short. Hertzfeldt has appeared at some of the showings of ME and has apparently said that this was a project that was meant to be shared with a musical artist he admired back in 2022. The artist came to him with an idea for visual accompaniment for their latest album. Hertzfeldt agreed, since he is a fan of their work. Once his visuals were well underway, something apparently caused him to scrap the idea and separate his film from this artist entirely, having to go back to the drawing board, retool the entire film, and pair his visuals with other forms of music.
It’s not confirmed who the artist in question is, but there’s speculation that ME was formerly a co-project with Canadian indie-rock outfit Arcade Fire, whose album WE (yes, also in all caps) dropped in 2022. That same year, multi-instrumentalist Win Butler was hit with a slew of accusations of inappropriate behaviour and sexual misconduct: a good enough reason for one to back out of a project with such a person, I’d say. WE has themes about panic, existentialism, capitalism, political crises, societies folding, and even COVID-19-related turmoil. These are themes that are heavily present in ME as well. There’s also a character who is an eye that grows into a massive being, which feels like the final piece of evidence necessary to close this case once you look at WE’s album cover (let’s also not forget that ME is literally WE upside down, and a reemphasis on how this is solely Hertzfeldt’s project now).
With this in mind, it’s easy to see that the separate components of ME were meant to link up to songs. As it currently stands, ME feels like a handful of vignettes who thematically converge together but feel disjointed from one another at the same time. This isn’t a problem by any means, but ME feels far less seamless than Hertzfeldt’s usual works. In a way, we have three or four stories pertaining to the same family from different vantage points, all told without any use of dialogue whatsoever, and paired with songs of different natures (from Hertzfeldt’s signature use of classical and operatic music, to an upbeat, near-jungle techno track). We follow what appears to be a patriarch of a family who is driven by his need to escape reality via an invention, his wife who yearns for love again, and their son who doesn’t approve of his new sibling (an anthropomorphic eyeball). If any of this feels unusual, you’re clearly not familiar with the works of Don Hertzfeldt.
What is happening at the same time are visions of a nation in ruin. Police officers attacking people with batons; the military opening fire on fellow beings; masked-clad bodies who didn’t survive the pandemic; buildings destroyed. Hertzfeldt frames these vignettes like a silent film, with a noticeably faster frame rate and implied markings and dust on the “celluloid”. The film also changes colour depending on the time of day (which is also a trait shared with the silent era), including bronze, light blue, and even black (with white drawings) to represent the nighttime. Are we going to be looked back upon as a deceased nation by those who come after us via these remnant artifacts to rely on? Maybe. Either that, or history repeats itself and we will never get as far as we could when we get in our own way; Hertzfeldt takes us aesthetically back one hundred years for a good portion of ME.
Even if Hertzfeldt wanted to distance himself from WE, his film is appropriately titled ME because of how much of the film feels like individual characters who only show what is happening to them personally. Despite us following a family for the majority of the film, we see each storyline through different pairs of eyes. There’s the aggressive, jaded family man who takes out his frustrations on his wife, who never discovers what happens when he shoos her away. We then find out, leading to another vignette. We are all going through these universal crises together, but they feel like personal battles against the world for each and every single one of us. WE would be a highly fitting title, but ME works just as well (if not, even better).
The images get far more specific. That sibling which is just an eye? The son of the family tries to ignore it, only resulting in the eye growing to a massive size to be noticed. I read this as how nothing we have is private anymore in the digital age, no matter how desperately we try to pretend that our personal information isn’t threatened; if anything, this matter is only getting worse. Hertzfeldt makes this point peculiarly bittersweet, as he gives this eye a personality and soul, so we flat out feel bad once it is ignored to the point of disappearing (only to reappear a thousand times bigger, mind you, so don’t feel too sad for it). While there is bloodshed, yearning for the past (through time travel-like means), and worry, everything feels separate (into smaller parts) yet uniform.
That is until the final act: one of the most cryptic, avant-garde sequences Hertzfeldt has made to date. We watch a nervous system (brain, eyes, nerve endings, and all), bleeding from its neck no less, belt out an operatic melody while tethered to a series of subsystems (these represent many things, from a family tree and a societal web, to what appears to be a wall of streaming service options with every film ending at the exact same time). We are inundated with information, anxiety, and hopelessness. It’s far too much for our minds and nerves to handle. As it sings its swan song and disconnects for good (in ways I can only allow the short to detail), this sense of existential dread is what Hertzfeldt is feeling. This climax feels so detached from the rest of the film, likely because he feels disassociated from the world. He recognizes that we all do. This “me” is most certainly a “we”: a moment to feel seen despite how alone we feel in these desperate times.
While ME doesn’t feel like an instant triumph like Hertzfeldt’s greatest works, it feels so stuffed with metaphors and symbols — both quite obvious and fairly obscure — that you’ll be begging to rewatch the film as soon as you’re done with your first viewing. For many, there’s no opportunity to watch the film again anytime soon, so these images and songs will be lodged in our brain as we scour for more answers. There is so much going on as well, seeing as each vignette is quite short, the frame rate for most of the film is low making the information come at you faster than usual, and there are sometimes three or four things happening on screen at once. There’s clearly much to unpack and a need to rewatch the film again and again once the opportunity arises.
It’s also great to see a director who is known for pushing boundaries attempt to go even further with a release that is completely uncompromised. ME collects every viewer and their individual thought patterns into one experience and lets then know that we’re all in this together; pulling this off in general is one thing, but the unorthodox and experimental means is the extra mile, particularly because of how challenging it is to amalgamate everyone with unconventional, untried methods (this usually doesn’t work, because the masses scoff at many forms of the avant-garde). It may take some time for ME to reveal its true colours to me as a result as I sit and stew on what I just watched, but I can safely say that Hertzfeldt is not slowing down, nor is he conforming, with his latest release: an attack-on-the-senses reminder that twenty first century living is affecting all of us.
Andreas Babiolakis has a Masters degree in Film and Photography Preservation and Collections Management from Ryerson University, as well as a Bachelors degree in Cinema Studies from York University. His favourite times of year are the Criterion Collection flash sales and the annual Toronto International Film Festival.