Art saves Giacometti in Eternal Gaze. © Sam Chen.

Eternal Gaze
Eternal Gaze is a CGI-animated short, which unfolds almost entirely in black and white. The subject is sculptor Alberto Giacometti, famed Swiss surrealist known for his exaggeratedly tall human and animal figures. The action takes place entirely within the artist’s workshop near the end of his life, as he applies clay to armatures and builds some of his last works. Giacometti, portrayed in a caricatured version of his real-life visage, smokes and frets through his rainy-day artistic labors, alternately creating new pieces and banging his fists in frustration until he is overcome by sleep. In a nightmare, an intruder breaks in and starts to smash up the place, but it turns out to be someone with a familiar face. Years pass and we watch Giacometti in his final hours, coughing and spluttering as, stricken, he grabs his chest and collapses — but one of his sculptures catches him, and as all of his works come to life one by one, smiling beatifically at him, his face fills with ineffable contentment and he falls dead in their embrace.

If this sounds mawkish and sentimental, it is. Chen’s technique is faultless — the animation is accomplished and thorough, the movement natural, the lighting expressive, the effects and textures almost tactile in their realism. It is a visual treat to watch; it is also torture. Moribund to the extreme, Eternal Gaze makes Song of the South look like L’Avventura. The camera darts about and strings soar dramatically, but there’s no drama. All the artifice screams Important while that importance is never earned. Despite — or more likely because of — its maudlin excesses, Eternal Gaze has won a slew of animation festival awards, including Best Animation at SIGGRAPH. It was produced independently by the director, Sam Chen.