VERDICT: Domonkos Erhardt’s student short ‘From the Corner of My Eyes’ uses the malleability of the animated image to great effect to capture a miniature moment of connection.
From the Corner of My Eyes takes place primarily on a juddering old Budapest bus.
In fact, Domonokos Erhardt’s heady short takes place primarily in the window reflection of such a bus – or at least it seems to. Made as the graduation film from the director’s master’s at Moholy-Nagy University of Art and Design, the film bears the familiar hallmarks of a brief, contained student animation project but is inventively animated and its depiction of an instant of human connection is both relatable and oddly touching. The film premiered back at the Berlinale, where it got a special mention in the Generation 14plus section, and now it competes as part of the student competition in Sarajevo.
Alongside his work in animation, Erhardt is also a comic book artist and the visual style of From the Corner of My Eyes bears many resemblances to the kind of frames you might find in an indie graphic novel. Using bold blocks of light and shade, the aesthetic calls to mind lino or woodcuts, with pastel colour washes less interested in picking out detail than casting objects and people in their own unique, evocative hue. Even taken as static moments, the images have an other-worldly quality to them but the way that the film plays with light creates these almost expressionist sequences where movements seep from the shadows and people can be dragged into dreams. The glimpses of Budapest beyond the bus are atmospheric. Still, the action inside the bus is beautifully uncanny in the way the external darkness is impenetrable and the windows act as distorted mirrors.
The story that Erhardt uses these animated flourishes to tell is one that most people will be able to relate to. A guy gets onto a bus and as his gaze passes across the glass of the window he locks eyes – almost imperceptibly, for just an instant – with a woman sitting behind him via their reflections. That fleeting second of association blossoms in the man’s imagination, emerging from the glass in the window as what-might-have-beens fill the screen, before landing back with a thud in the bus, where the duo remains, sat on either side of the aisle. It’s a miniature tale, but you get caught up in its sweeping visuals.
