Richard Condie’s The Big Snit (1985
It’s a tough film to interpret, with its mix of the domestic and the global, and its blend of cynicism and hopefulness.
This Monday Short was originally posted on July 3, 2017, which explains the references to the Canada Day Weekend. We are re-posting Peter Hemminger's Monday Short Blog posts until we've exhausted the incredible archive.
A Canadian classic for the Canada Day long weekend. I remember seeing Richard Condie’s The Big Snit on TV quite often when I was a kid, and there’s plenty for a 10-year-old to latch onto in the absurdist humour of “Sawing for Teens” and Condie’s loose, exaggerated lines. But I’m sure a lot of it went over my head, and it wasn’t until I came back to it as an adult that I started to see that Condie was reaching deeper. It’s a tough film to interpret, with its mix of the domestic and the global, and its blend of cynicism and hopefulness. But for all its ambiguity, it isn’t a hard film to watch (although I’ve always found the domestic arguments a little disturbing), and is a perfect example of the freedom animation gives a filmmaker to crate their own world, and their own rules, and have faith that an audience will come along for the ride.
syn. This wonderfully wacky animation film is a look at two simultaneous conflicts, the macrocosm of global nuclear war and the microcosm of a domestic quarrel, and how each conflict is resolved. Presented with warmth and unexpectedly off-the-wall humor, the film is open to a multitude of interpretations.
dir. Richard Condie
1985