9/10
Nostalgia for Love
9 November 2009
Warning: Spoilers
Today I watched a wonderful little animation, upon which I accidentally stumbled. La Maison en Petit Cubes managed to make a dent in the otherwise so rigid structure of my daily pattern.

The theme here is about keeping a grip on your own life adventure; in this case in a very physical way through the stacking of houses over time. The setting is one where (through climate change probably) the world's water level is continuously increasing. As a result of this, people are forced to build on top of their own houses to 'keep their head above the water'. The beautiful thing depicted here is that one's house tells their life story. The old man, while moving his possessions on floor higher for the umpteenth time, dives down into his own memory. As he floats through the old spaces, their stories start to unfold before his eyes. He sees the development in reverse order, starting with grandchildren and ending with the relationship with the love of his life.

On a less joyful note: I couldn't help but seeing similarities with the theme in the Pixar animation 'Up' - which makes me doubt the originality of the latter.

Short as this story may be, it gave me a wonderful insight into the nostalgia that spaces of a home can give, and how brilliant it would be if we would live in a new space every so often, thereby preserving the previous one as a ready-made personal history book.
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