A lovely story about escaping one’s situation for something brighter, Canary switches up its light-hearted tone for something all the more serious and never misses a step in doing so. A gorgeous and affecting short film.
In 1922, a young boy named Sonny worked in an underground coal mine with a group of adult miners. He takes care of the caged canary, which the men use to detect deadly methane gas. Hoping to escape the dark and dank underground, the boy teaches his bird to play dead. Yet inevitably, this prank goes tragically wrong.
First and foremost, Canary is gorgeous; there is nothing that can take away from how this film looks. It comes across as a Pixar short that isn’t afraid to show its teeth and threaten to bring tears to the eyes. We feel the gut-punching moments thanks to the animation at hand; when Sonny realises what has happened, we feel even minuscule movement on his face. This isn’t something that is easy to accomplish.
It takes confidence to allow Canary to take the turn that it does; directors P-H Dallaire and Benoit Therriault could have very easily kept the film light with maybe just a hint of danger. Instead, they take a jarring approach that equally surprises as well as affects you to become a fascinating 12 minutes of dialogue-free cinema.
Sonny wants to be free from working in the mine, and if he can bring his canary with him, then all the better. He, like his canary, wants to be in the open air, to feel the breeze, to experience life. Not to be trapped in a place of darkness and fear. You feel for them both, and their cute interactions together lead you into a false sense of security. So, when the other shoe drops, and boy does it drop, it gets you in the chest.
In the end, Canary is a wonderful triumph of a film, a gorgeous animation that isn’t afraid of those dark places; a must-watch.
★★★★
Support Us
I am but a small website in this big wide world. As much as I would love to make this website a big and wonderful entity. That would bring in more costs. So, for now all I hope is to make Upcoming On Screen self-sufficient. Well enough to where any website fees are less of a worry for me in the future. You can support the website below…
Patreon
You can support us in a variety of ways (other than that wonderful word of mouth) and those lovely follows. If you are so inclined to help out then you can support us via Patreon, find our link here!. We don’t want to ask much from you, so for now we have limited our tiers to £1.50 and £3.50. These will of course grow the more we plan to do here at Upcoming On Screen.
Buy Us A Coffee
Our other method if through the wonderful Buy us a Coffee feature, but seeing as we are not the biggest fans of coffee, a pizza will do! We keep it fairly small change on that as well and it allows you to give just a one off payment, so no need to worry about that monthly malarky! We even have a little icon on the website for you to find it and help us out with the running of the website.
Social Media
You can also support us via Twitter and Facebook by giving us a follow and a like. Every one helps!
