Synopsis
A balloon wraps itself around a young child's hand, bringing him higher and higher, much to the child's delight, but a sinister truth begins to unravel.
Billy's Balloon
1998 Directed by Don Hertzfeldt
Studio
Country
Original Language
Spoken Language
Alternative Titles
빌리의 풍선, 暴力小气球
Releases by Date
Premiere
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USA
New Orleans Film Festival
Releases by Country
USA
01 Oct 1998
- Premiere New Orleans Film Festival
Popular reviews
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DAMN THE ILLUSION OF MOVEMENT TO HELL!
If you didn't watch the version with the introduction, then please go back and try again. If you need help, hang up and then dial your operator.
"I don't think that I can ever look at balloons the same way ever again," my girlfriend said as soon as 'A Film by Don Hertzfeldt' popped up. Well put, Susie... well put.
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WELL, Jonathan. Well indeed.
Few things inspire me more than resistance to oppression; it is, because of this, difficult in equal measure to denounce the oppressed turning their oppression back on their oppressors. This film is a gleeful depiction of both of those essential moments in the cycle of species-wide self-destruction we set out upon in our metaphorical Garden of Eden. Reduced to a sort of bitter, ironic transgressive preying upon our--
Yeah, okay, it's just funny to watch babies get the christ beat out of them by balloons.
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the balloons collectively organized themselves and with great malice aforethought said "fuck them kids"
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Life is pain.
Sometimes we manage to make emotional connections with other life-forms feeling the same pain we feel.
But mostly it's just pain.
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I don't think I've had this visceral a response to a movie in terms of feeling so distressed in quite a while. Realizing that I'm feeling upset over a fucking balloon beating the shit outta babies is hilarious. But I actually said "oh god stop it" out loud, alone in my apartment, the third time the balloon went up. It's like the Irreversible of animation.
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Great little student film.
Pretty much The Red Balloon.. just the other way around. I fucking loved this short for some reason.He received a B.
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The subject of Hertzfeldt's art is the loss of innocence: of the independently-minded artist confronted with his failure to adapt to commercial demands (Rejected), of the healthy bystander to someone else's ravaging illness (It's Such a Beautiful Day). Here, his character is a child being bludgeoned by a balloon. The ballon doesn't have reasons; it's a balloon. And the child, fully integrated into the cartoonish universe of violence, doesn't really get hurt. That's not Hertzfeldt's bag. He's in it to show us, using pared-down minimalism that's nonetheless suffused with bitterness and rich sentimentality, that the world can be needlessly, reasonlessly cruel.
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