Winter Days

This has the same problems all anthologies do: a contrived premise & restrictive form can theoretically be the right kind of nudge and parameter, the exact weaponized sense of urgency needed to create sparks and bottle some lightning ... but in practice all it ever actually does is showcase how good a great artist is at their weakest, when their greatest strength, stubborn passion and individual inspiration, are completely stripped and compromised and they're frozen in time with their pants down. Doesn't matter how great the premise or how much respect one has for the curator, it's an assault; torturous and relentless, great artists showinghow effortless they can be in any circumstance while middling artists fight for their lives, greedily relying on crutches or too blind to realize that's what the situation made them resort to, meanwhile poor artists are getting their already threadbare emperor's clothes yanked off, almost unfair how preemptive, before the drumbeat of time gets to expose them as those relegated to footnotes of history. All that to say that whenever you sit down to one of these, you cling for dear life to the merely-good one or two segments by those so talented even this kind of form doesn't phase 'em, albeit they're only all the more impressive because the worst crap you've ever seen fills up the remainder. Really only Norstein's is worth the watch, and it's a shame it's stuck here forever and hasn't been released on the 2 (one somewhat and one otherwise very thorough) BD collections of his work. Takahata's is OK; I get what it's going for after watching it a few times, although I don't think a short among many shorts is the best place to put anything layered, even if one of those layers is potty humor. Everything else is forgettable or an insult. I end up thinking instead about the many times in live-action anthology films that only David Lynch's were worth a grain of salt. Seriously, given the premise of its anthology (whose name I forget compared to the, you know, one-minute short), "Premonitions Following an Evil Deed," all one shot, so completely upstages the efforts of the other directors that it's like watching a couple meek gnomish figures holding up a delicate antenna get struck into scorched earth by a massive thunderbolt. Watching that and the Norstein short from this on repeat however many times matches the run-time is a better use of life than the total of either anthology's rendered-ancillary works combined. The 5 is in recognition of the Norstein short alone. Go watch any of Norstein's other shorts or Takahata's films (including pre-Ghibli) and return to this only if you're desperate for rarities.