PAPRIKA Animation Analysis: Opposing Forces Within One Body

Satoshi Kon had a unique way of telling stories on parallel levels of reality. While this is most obvious in the editing and scene transitions, the actual animation by Madhouse is certainly worth analyzing as well. 

One scene from PAPRIKA (2006) I find particularly interesting from an animator's point of view is about two characters with opposing goals that share one single body. While the superficially realistic animation of many Madhouse films is sometimes mistaken for rotoscoped live-action reference material, here the animators' mastery of expressing weight and forces within an acting scene are fairly obvious. It is in fact a very sophisticated example of how to successfully apply all the basic animation principles.

many simultaneously interconnected movements in different speeds; squash and stretch on the heads.

Analyzing Animation
When I analyze an animation sequence, I ask myself what the objective of a each shot is, i.e. what story point (or "beat" in McKee's language) we learn from a shot, and how this is visually communicated through animation (= movement).



[NSFW] Animation Analysis of a Scene from PAPRIKA (Kon, 2006) from Oswald Iten on Vimeo.

What we can learn from analyzing the work of master animators, storyboarders and layouters for our own work are answers to questions like:

Storytelling

• Which movement is best suited for the story point we want to get across?
• Which shot size is necessary to communicate this movement?
• How do we make sure that the audience gets the story point and is not distracted?

Acting/Animation

• When do we need to hold a movement?
• What body part leads a movement and to what effect?
• How can we use counter-movements to emphasize strength and energy?
• How do we organically time struggle and bursts of energy?
• When does it make sense to switch from "twos" to "ones" or "threes"?

But the most important inspiration for any character animator should always come from observing reality and human behaviour around us.

If anyone knows the names of the animators who worked on this sequence, please let me know, I would like to list them here.

[Update 2016-12-23] Thanks to reader "ibcf", we now know that the animators were: Ei Inoue and Toshiyuki Inoue!

Laputa - Castle in the Sky: Animating Weight

Ever since GERTIE THE DINOSAUR (Winsor McCay, 1914) tried to pick up a rock and drank so much water that the lakeshore gave in under her feet (as seen on the left) animators have tried to express weight with drawings. While the work of American giants like Vladimir Tytla or Milt Kahl has been analyzed over and over, the work of Japanese feature animators still seems to be ignored or dismissed as less impressive - at least in the West.

However, Studio Ghibli animators - and they are in no way the only ones - master disparate challenges such as weight, size relations and metamorphosis within a style of realistic movements so effortlessly that we tend to overlook their amazing skills and take them for granted.

Since flying, floating and thus overcoming gravitation is such an integral part of Miyazaki's films, indicating the weight of characters is of paramount importance to the success of those fantasy worlds. In yet another scene from LAPUTA - CASTLE IN THE SKY I am looking at the transition from weightlessness to gravity:

The balancing of weight starts with Pazu almost toppling over on the "spring board". While Sheeta is floating down on 1s, Pazu's violent action is animated on 2s and 3s. The following set of screenshots contains every drawing of Pazu's balancing action. The timing can be seen in the clip above.

Although such violent action on 2s and 3s appears jerky to today's CG-spoiled audiences, the shifting of Pazu's weight is clearly visible in every pose. It seems the film makers rather saved the extra inbetweens in favor of real character animation. After all, he could have simply come to a halt without the little balancing action.

The selected screenshots below are taken from my favorite part of the scene. They illustrate the subtlety of Studio Ghibli's character animation (it's essential to click on the images to see them more clearly).

Pazu is so stunned that it only occurs to him at the last minute that he should put down the kettle first. And when he does he briefly looks at it and then while putting it down he already looks at Sheeta again:

As you can see in the following GIF, Pazu is moving upwards (white lines indicate space between waistlines) about as slowly as Sheeta is floating down.

But when they finally touch there is a cut to a medium close up so that we are able to see that Sheeta is still floating and not leaning on Pazu's arms with her weight:

But as soon as the power of her crystal is vanishing (indicated by a dramatic change in lighting), her heaviness seems to increase...

...to the point of shifting her weight completely on Pazu's arms at which moment we get a cut on action back to a wider shot that reminds us (and Pazu) of the tenuous situation.

In the next GIF, I have omitted many inbetweens to uncover the hierarchy of movements of different body parts that indicate Pazu's struggle with Sheeta's full weight (is she even heavier because the crystal is dragging her down?).
Overlap while going down: (1) arms first, then head (2) in a rather fast move down, as the lagging cap indicates (3-4).
Lifting weight: Head goes first (6-7), lifting movement alternates between force in shoulders and head (8-11) with legs pushing slightly inward and down. Once the weight is carried by the muscles of Pazu's straight back (12), he is able to stretch his legs (13).

We feel Sheeta's unnatural heaviness because Pazu is not even able to lift his feet. He merely shuffles them along the planks:

The slight rebound (gray line) of these spring board like planks adds to the feeling of weight:

And although Sheeta appears to be as heavy and lifeless as a bag of cement, Pazu is putting her down very slowly and gently:

After such an exhaustive task, he doesn't even seem to have the strength to stand up again. So after looking at Sheeta, he remains in a ducked position to regain his breath.

Clearly, at first glance, all of this looks very realistic, "normal" even. And since there is very little in the vein of exaggerated squash and stretch, we are inclined to overlook the true mastery behind it. In fact, it works so well that we do not admire the animator's feat but simply look at a struggling character. With all those subtle action like putting down the bucket it feels so natural and well observed. Nevertheless, this scene showcases all the tools an animator can rely on to express weight and gravity without sacrificing realism.

As a contrasting illustration of a (deliberately) weightless landing, here is a scene from HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE which (accidentally?) depicts the flying wizard with a blue crystal around his neck:

Directed by Clint Eastwood - Part II: show, don't tell

One of Eastwood's characteristics is his willingness to deliver exposition in images and not dialogue (a technique he might have learned from working with Sergio Leone on the Dollars-Trilogy). This is one area where animation filmmakers may directly profit by studying Eastwood (or Leone or Melville) films.

Classical Hollywood protagonists have to face and finally resolve a more or less suppressed incident of their past. Just think of Casablanca (1942) or The Silence of the Lambs (1991). Eastwood, however, likes to play taciturn characters whose past stays vague at best.

As a director, he doesn't like to explain too much or talk down to the audience. He'd rather leave as much as possible to the imagination:

"don’t lay out so much that it insults their intelligence. I try to give a certain amount to their imagination. [...] I think that audiences are smarter than a lot of producers think they are, and I think the audience will draw with you"

It is thus self-evident that Eastwood doesn't like expository dialogue. Whenever possible he establishes character relationships through staging in space. For that he relies heavily on master shots and shots with two or more characters visible at the same time. In a time when even Martin Scorsese (in The Departed and Shutter Island) has started to favor the single character shots, it is a real treat to have at least one mainstream director left who leaves the choice to the audience which character they want to focus on.

Eastwood's use of cinemascope for his larger scale stories comes in pretty handy as well. However, thanks to Joel Cox' perfected editing rhythm the individual shots do not attract attention to themselves or distort the spatial relationship like in a Sergio Leone film.

It's worth mentioning how many observers (innocent or not-so-innocent bystanders) there usually are in his western scenes. Ever since the "man with no name", Eastwood himself is often introduced as an outsider to the community who observes for some time and only reacts after a long time.

The exposition of the strange town of Lago in the surreal morality play High Plains Drifter may be one of the best examples of the Eastwood way of setting up a story. Communication is reduced to glances and sounds. Nevertheless, one immediately gets the notion that the townspeople of Lago do not welcome the stranger. 

0:10 Eastwood's head in shadow, filmed from behind, no facial expression visible 
0:13 With the music fading away, the rhythm of the horse noises is carrying the scene acoustically. 
0:23 low angle shot from behind an unsettled citizen. 
0:29 Eastwood's face visible, in shadow; horse sounds obtrusive, audible seagulls to remind us of the presence of an eerie lake. 
0:39 the stranger in silhouette in the shadow, his fearful observer behind glass following his every move.
0:52 through the unfinished building we see a white figure standing high above on the balcony of the town hotel. 
0:55 Close-up on white woman from below. Her face is in the light, she looks down suspiciously but seems less fearful, has a broom in her hands so we know that she's working (which is always a good thing in Eastwood's universe). 
1:09 the next woman's face is in the shadow. She is one of only three women in this town but will not have an important role and thus doesn't get a reverse-shot or a close-up.
1:20 the barber stands outside and the camera in the dark room. He gets a reverse-shot. 
1:32 The third woman is introduced in a shot with Eastwood. She's the only person who crosses Eastwoods path. Her face is shaded by her hat. Eastwood seems to follow her with his eyes. 
1:48 the white saloon door and one person sitting and one standing leave no question about the size of the dwarf coming out of the white door, although we only see him from waist up. At least he's coming out, is not paralyzed like the rest of the townspeople.
1:55 real close-up on Eastwood's dark face, reverse shot on sweating observer
2:07 the Lago mining company is visible, two men about to leave town in a carriage 
2:12 bullwhip sound, Eastwood immediately turns his head 
2:14 first words of incidental dialogue, carriage sounds obscure horse's noises
2:22 another bullwhip cracking, Eastwood turns away disgustedly.

There's no way one cannot get the importance of the bullwhip to Eastwood's "stranger" character.

Staging talking heads
As you might have noticed, Eastwood likes to block his actors so that their heads are hardly ever on a horizontal line which is abetted in the western by having some of them sit on horses or stand on boardwalks.

This is not a publicity photograph but an actual screenshot from Flags of our Fathers (2006): the characters' heads' are not on a horizontal line and we can actually choose on which character's reaction we'd like to focus.

Eastwood also likes to stage dialogue scenes in contemporary films with one person sitting and one standing which creates visual dynamics. When the camera is facing the sitting person in a shot-reverse-shot sequence we often see the hip (where the guns hang in a western) of the standing character. I have nicknamed this recurring type of shot the "hipshot".

Eastwood's Ben Shockley in The Gauntlet (1977) gets his next assignment in alternating overshoulder- and hip-shots.

In Gran Torino (2008), Kowalski's opposite doesn't even sit and we get low-angle hip-shot.

Of course this is no exclusive Eastwood trait, but he likes to hark back to it more often than other directors. The same can be said about the moving camera from the point of view of the rider which leads to a slight encircling of standing characters. While this is commonplace in scenes involving horseback riding or cars, Eastwood transplants this short camera movement to all kinds of different movies as can be seen from the following non-exhaustive montage:

Note: I haven't decided yet if there will be a next installment of this series and what area it would cover. In the meantime you may be interested in this earlier post on Bronco Billy (1980).

There are many books on Clint Eastwood's career both as a director and an actor. One of the more rewarding is Laurence F. Knapp's analysis of Eastwood's first 18 films aptly titled: Directed by Clint Eastwood. Unfortunately, I don't own a copy and Amazon will only send used or new books to Americans, but I have read it in a library a few years ago and Knapp is really digging into Eastwood's visual style (without the benefit of pictures, though).

Last but not least, there's also an interview book edited by Robert E. Kapsis and Kathie Coblentz from which I have excerpted many of the quotes in these two posts.

BRAVE - Part I: Traces of Miyazaki

Pixar's latest film may feel like a letdown to the animation community because of its retreat into the abhorred fairy tale ghetto. But while the story and characters essentially follow the Pixar rules of storytelling, some of the magic aspects are more closely resembling Hayao Miyazaki's princess films than Disney's. The following essay is first and foremost concerned with these allusions and whether they add up to something more profound than superficial homage. I will look at BRAVE's Pixar lineage in a future post. 

When you read the following paragraphs, please keep in mind that I thoroughly enjoyed many aspects of BRAVE and certainly recommend it.
[CONTAINS SPOILERS]

"At Pixar, when we have a problem and we can't seem to solve it, we often take a laser disc of one of Mr. Miyazaki's films and look at a scene in our screening room for a shot of inspiration. And it always works! We come away amazed and inspired. Toy Story owes a huge debt of gratitude to the films of Mr. Miyazaki." (John Lasseter)

According to John Lasseter, Pixar itself was modelled on Studio Ghibli. While Disney, Dreamworks and Pixar directors from Tony Bancroft to Pete Docter never tire of proclaiming how much Miyazaki's films mean to them and how they are continuously influenced by the Japanese master's work, the key elements of Miyazaki's style haven't hardly been surfacing in their films yet.

One might point out that Up with it's elderly protagonist, the flying house and the rousing battle in the sky might have been inspired by the Japanese auteur's love for fantastical aircrafts (and Howl's Moving Castle in particular). Also the fact that both Wall-E and Up start in one place and are suddenly going off into a whole different direction may owe a great deal to Miyazaki's episodic screenwriting (or rather storyboarding) style that is organically evolving during production.

Altough Brave still is a typical Pixar film, it is the studio's first picture that bears traces of Miyazaki's archaic fantasy universe as seen in Nausicaä (1984), Mononoke Hime (1997) or Howl's Moving Castle (2004) with the most obvious parallels being the bow-wielding redhead princess and the depiction of the magical aspects of the story.

I don't think it's a coincidence that the Japanese trailer for Brave focuses on the darker aspects suggesting a larger thematic scope than the story ultimately lives up to. In what is practically an amplified version of the exciting earlier teaser, Merida comes off as a distant cousin to female warriors Nausicaa and San (Mononoke Hime) whose adventures to save enchanted forests full of intriguing creatures required real acts of bravery.

Early Brave Teaser

Full Japanese Trailer

The eerie blue "will o' the wisps" suggest an animistic worldview and - although firmly rooted in northern folklore - are thus reminiscent of the white spirits who accompany the travellers through the forest in Mononoke Hime.

Strangely sounding forest spirits (Mononoke Hime)

Blue "will o' the wisps" leading the princess to her destiny.

While the Japanese trailer is giving away almost all the mystical locations, Pixar's two best kept secrets - the mother's transformation and the identity of the witch character - are still not revealed. As it turns out in the film, the woodcarving witch is a lot closer to Miyazaki's ambivalent elderly women and sorceresses than to a Disney witch or evil queen. Even the design seems to be inspired by various female Miyazaki characters not least by the bewitched Sophie of Howl's Moving Castle.

The wise old woman with Nausicaa (1984)

The wise old woman with Ashitaka (Mononoke Hime, 1997)

Yubaba and twin sister Zeniba in Spirited Away (2001)

Sophie transformed into an elderly woman by a witch (Howl's Moving Castle, 2004)

Brave's woodcarver witch

In spirit and scope Brave may be farther away from Mononoke Hime than Avatar (to pick a recently successful western equivalent which also lacks Miyazaki's more subtle storytelling approach), but I still think it's rewarding to explore its storyline and characters a little further in the context of Miyazaki's works.

A Princess Is Not Inherently Bad
Much has been written about Pixar's lack of female protagonists and the deploring fact that the long awaited first heroine is a princess. However, kingdoms, princesses and magic have always been part and parcel of Miyazaki's epic stories, whether they were set in medieval or post-apocalyptic Japan or an alternate version of Europe. Nevertheless, no audience in the world would confuse any of them with Disney's softened princesses derived from harsh folk tales collected by the Brothers Grimm or literary fairy tales by Hans Christian Andersen.

Miyazaki circumvents the most problematic aspect of princess protagonists by avoiding romance and marriage. Despite Nausicaa's friendship with Asbel, a foreign prince, romantic love is of no importance to the story. In Mononoke Hime it's not even an option for its two more mature royal protagonists.

The relationships at the heart of many a Studio Ghibli film are based on deep feelings more closely to a child's love. Such profound non-romantic affections are most obvious in children's films like Totoro (1988), Ponyo (2008) or Takahata's Grave of the Fireflies (1988). Focusing on the relationship between an adolescent girl and her mother, Brave is following this path quite closely in the beginning.

Not So Brave
While one can perfectly picture Nausicaa staying childless and happy, Merida is not likely to "stay single and let my hair flow in the wind as I ride through the glen firing arrows into the sunset" for the rest of her life. In fact, as the ending suggests (Merida is riding together with her mother after having fought for her right to choose a husband), her unwillingness to marry may have simply been the result of her not being ready for it (and the whole mother-daughter conflict a natural stage of adolescence).

Besides, her suitors are so ridiculous that any sane person should have rejected them (the danger of war among the clans is never even noticeable). I am not so sure whether Merida would have been reluctant to trade her freedom in for a boy as intelligent and handsome as prince Ashitaka from Mononoke Hime.

However brave it seems to an adolescent girl to change her fate so that she can choose when and whom she will marry, Brave might have been a more powerful film had Merida chosen to fight for the right to stay single even as a mature woman. And let us not forget that she only had the courage to "change her fate" with the consent and support of her mother-turned-bear.

What made Brave a less courageous film seems to be partly based on the remarkable decision to portray Merida as a woman and not a man in a dress.

The Female Warrior Trap
Ever since female heroes (as opposed to heroines which most often are tragic characters) have become popular in mainstream action films they have usually been measured by their achievements in men's domains. Traditionally strong women are depicted as successful warriors - examples range from Sigourney Weaver's Ripley in the Alien series (1979-1997) to Mulan (1998).

And although Merida's fascination for bow and arrow and her setup in the first half hour suggest such a familiar character, Brenda Chapman and Mark Andrews have fortunately resisted the female warrior trap and thus made Merida a more interesting character than many of the sword-wielding amazons of the last decades.

Miyazaki often relies on gender role reversals resulting in both female protagonists and antagonists and men who prefer not to fight. With opponents who are seldom all good or evil, he achieves a considerable balance of ambivalent male and female characters. As mentioned above, Brave is more interested in its female characters and men are generally depicted as hoggish or rowdy children who hardly ever realize what is going on around them.

The mother-daughter-relationship, however, is rendered more subtly than in most mainstream family films. Although we experience the story more or less from a teenager's point of view, Elinor is never demonized and although she is not the one coming of age, she is changing as well.

Transformation
But before that she has to undergo physical transformation against her will. As a bear she may be the one to take orders from her haughty daughter but unlike role reversal films like Freaky Friday or Brother Bear she does not have to earn her rightful place as a human being by walking in her daughter's shoes. She merely serves as a reminder to Merida of the consequences of her selfish behaviour.

In Miyazaki's films magic and the spirit world always co-exist with human reality even in modern-day films like Spirited Away (2001) or Ponyo. Shape shifting characters are quite common even in Howl's Moving Castle which is based on an English fantasy novel. But unlike transformed characters in European fairy tales like "The Frog Prince", Miyazaki's transformed characters (e.g. Sophie) are constantly changing.

Elinor's transformation is of the same nature. She is shifting from a queen in a bear suit to a real bear which is beautifully rendered by subtly changing animation styles. These scenes really shine with the most lifelike and realistic animation to be found in any Pixar film. The transformation itself is gladly left to the imagination. In contrast, the transforming characters of Mononoke Hime and Howl's Moving Castle are animated in most original and inspiring ways.

Transformation of a dying boar god in Mononoke Hime.

The stylization of Japanese character animation - despite feeling closer to live-action than the constant motion of the western "illusion of life" style - allows for such phenomena however. When Nausicaa or Ashitaka get excited, for example, their hair is visually developing a life of its own (see below). Funnily enough, reviewers have outbidden each other writing about Merida's hair having a life of its own. While one can see the metaphorical nature of such an observation it is simply inexistent in the animation (I haven't seen anything other than slowed-down but realistic overlap).

Ashitaka (Mononoke Hime) and..

...Nausicaa getting angry.

A Sense Of Wonder
Miyazaki's influence only goes so far even in the films of his most ardent American admirers. Visually, Brave is breathtaking and at times even magical. On the whole however, it lacks the quietness and natural pace of any studio Ghibli film. Although Brave's character animation seems to be far more inspired by real life than, say, The Lorax or Ice Age: Continental Drift, it still feels busy and a little too fast-moving.

To me, Miyazaki's slower narrative pace is essential to the creation of such memorably haunting pictures like the train ride in Spirited Away (see below). There should be time to breathe in a film, no matter how epic or small scale it be. At times Brave delves into a darker territory but it never addresses its adult subject matter as effortlessly and fearlessly as Miyazaki does. There is always some comic relief around the corner to lighten up or - more aptly - break the mood.

Spirited Away

If any studio in the western world has enough prestige, know-how and box-office power to change the notion of what a family film is and advance American animation once again, it is Pixar. Maybe they should invite Hayao Miyazaki as a director-in-residence. To really rise above  a well-made spectacular, a film should have a unique point of view that transcends pure entertainment.

Miyazaki's stories like Simpsons episodes often evolve into a different direction than one expects at the outset. This is one trait that Pixar has increasingly adopted and which, among other things, I will discuss in a future post about Brave's Pixar lineage.

Pooh vs. Pukh, a character analysis

My interest in storytelling and defining screen characters led me to analyze two very different yet faithful adaptations of Alexander Alan Milne’s children’s classic “Winnie-the-Pooh”. It just so happens that Wolfgang Reitherman’s first Disney adaptation Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree (1966) is based on the same two chapters as Fyodor Khitruk’s first two Vinni-Pukh (1969/1971) films, both of them about ten minutes long per chapter. However, Pooh and his friends come across as quite different characters in these two versions of the same simple story. 

The first two chapters of A. A. Milne’s book “Winnie-the-Pooh” from 1926 are built around Pooh’s incessant appetite for honey. In the first one he fails to get honey out of a treehole inhabited by bees, in the second one he climbs through another hole into a rabbit burrow and eats so much honey that he gets stuck when trying to climb out.

While Milne concentrates on Pooh’s relationship with Christopher Robin (CR) in the first chapter and introduces the good-mannered rabbit in the second, he only mentions the other characters in a sort of preview of later chapters. After all, Pooh is Christopher Robin’s favorite toy bear and CR is the narrator’s six year old son who wants his daddy to tell Pooh stories about himself, Pooh that is. In fact, Milne’s own son was called Christopher Robin and the book contains many a conversation between father and son in parentheses.

Thus, one might say the self-reflective narration has always been part of the appeal of the Pooh stories. So there’s no wonder that both the Russian and the American adaptations feature voice-over narration and characters looking into mirrors or even straight at the camera.

Literal but playful and appealing
The way Khitruk and Reitherman differ in how they incorporate the narrator and CR into the story is essential to the way they handle the characters and their on-screen relationships. They both seem to do Milne justice on different levels, though. True to Disney’s literal “illusion of life” paradigm, Reitherman frames the animated segments with a credit sequence over live-action footage of a deserted nursery full of stuffed animals and a book of Winnie-the-Pooh which belong to a boy called Christopher Robin “and they all live together in a wonderful world of make-believe”.

This ghostly human world feels as artificial and lifeless that it seems only natural to see the book open all by itself. As it turns out, there is no connection between the English narrator (Sebastian Cabot) and the American animated boy Christopher Robin whose voice belongs to director Reitherman’s son Bruce (later the voice of Mowgli). This Pooh story is obviously told to us and not to CR.

Since the original stories already lack any opportunities for emotional involvement (or Disney sentimentality) the film makers have cleverly expanded the concept of characters inhabiting a printed book, no matter how distancing this may turn out. The original self-reflective conversations between CR and his narrator-father have been translated into occasional interactions between Pooh and the narrator.

Yet the printed book and the carefully rendered illustrations support the notion that this is a children’s story told from an adult’s point of view, fondly looking down on the lovable characters like one is looking at a young child. After all, Pooh is only “stuffed with fluff” and “of very little brain”. The stories in this book might fuel a child’s imagination and role play, audience involvement is not as immediate though because of this additional layer.

Diving into that world

Khitruk’s narrator, on the other hand, is in no other relation to the characters than faithfully narrating their story. When these characters look at the camera, they may look directly at us or appear to think something that we don’t know about. By eliminating the meta-level that both Milne and Reitherman used to indicate the child-like make-believe world of embarking on adventures with forest animals and stuffed toys alike, Khitruk is able to eliminate CR and humans in general.

Thus, the director creates a world of immediacy itself, a universe where Vinni Pukh and his friends are very much alive, not as forest animals or stuffed toys but as “real” characters with no traces of human interference, there’s no distancing book involved.

A narrative that follows children’s logic is ideally suited for a visual style that has the warmth of children’s drawings. After all, this artistic illustration style was much more contemporary in 1969 than the timeless Disney-fied Shepard imitations (I happen to like so much). So Khitruk even manages to discard the “literary classic” or nostalgia dimension of Reitherman’s film without compromising Milne’s spirit.

Although breaking the concept of either style, both films give us a point-of-view up-shot at the "black rain cloud".

Probably the greatest advantage of such a conventionalized, two-dimensional style is the fact that the characters don’t need to be animated in an “illusion-of-life” fashion. The obviously skillful Russian animators have found a naïve style that allows very laconic and deadpan comic performances.

Rabbit is all excited, in Khitruk's style tilted glasses do the job.

Characters

The gopher that is "not in the book".

Although only Pooh, CR and Rabbit appear in the first two chapters, Reitherman sneaks in the whole gang of Pooh characters from the first book as extras – except for Piglet (instead there is a much criticized American gopher that is “not in the book”). Piglet however is mentioned in the preface of Milne’s book and comes off as a small but somehow jealous guy who would love to be as popular as Pooh.


By substituting Piglet for CR, Khitruk gives Pukh a screen partner who unlike CR is not considered mentally superior. Thus, characterized by his relationship with Piglet (Pyatachok), Pukh comes off as a distinct character quite different from what we are used to from the Disney version. Apart from the fact that he hardly ever smiles at anybody he also walks and talks in a swift pace. Especially in the second Pukh film, Piglet is breathlessly trying to keep up with him.

Piglet replaces Christopher Robin

Milne’s Pooh
But before comparing the different film characters, let’s have a look at how Milne characterizes Pooh in the book: According to the narrator, Pooh is CR’s favorite toy and likes to play a game, sit quietly in front of a fire or listen to a story, preferably about himself (as CR remarks). He also likes to make up songs and poems which he sings/hums when wandering about aimlessly. His thought process seems to be slow and steady and he talks to himself. All in all, he is pretty confident that his plans work. And above all, he has an insatiable appetite for honey.

In the second chapter we also learn that he is capable of self-reflection: He exercizes in front of a mirror and afterwards thinks about what it felt like being somebody else. Yet he is persistent enough not to believe Rabbit’s polite way of trying to get rid of him by posing as somebody else or even “nobody” (“But this is Me! – What sort of Me?”). In fact, Pooh doesn’t get the concept of saying things out of politeness at all. When he’s stuck he’s embarrassed and even crying at the prospects of not eating for a week, but it never occurs to him that this situation might have been uncomfortable for Rabbit as well. In his case, social ignorance leads to resilience and one couldn’t even be mad at him for that. E.H. Shepard’s illustrations hardly show any strong facial expressions.

Reitherman’s Pooh

The stereotyped thinking gesture.

Sebastian Cabot introduces Pooh as a lovable bear with very little brain and an insatiable appetite for honey. We see Pooh exercising and talking to himself in front of a mirror (self-reflection). He’s obviously a Teddy Bear. His voice (Sterling Holloway) is rather high but slow and charming, he always smiles and there is a stereotyped gesture to show his thought process. He speaks not only to himself but also to the narrator and sings whenever he is on his own, sometimes supported by a choir that emphasizes the mood of warm American nostalgia right from the title song.

Talking to himself and stuffed with fluff.

Another framing device.

This happy-go-lucky Pooh might be regretful but never angry or hurt, he even laughs when he bangs his head to a branch. The first person he thinks of is not CR but “Winnie the Pooh”. But like in the book, he relies on CR to get him out of tight places. Yet, the narrator tells us, Pooh is not “the sort to give up easily”. When he put his mind to honey, he stuck to it. He may always be happy and not be able to think a bad thought but he certainly can’t read other people’s feelings/intentions. After eating all Rabbit had, he’s simply disappointed that there’s no honey left, and – like in the book – doesn’t think about what he inflicted on Rabbit by getting stuck in his front door.

Khitruk’s Pukh
Although the harpsichord title tune and the fairy-tale narrator suggest a deliberate pace, Pukh himself is quite the opposite. Before we see him, we see his tracks and the narrator tells us that he always likes a snack and that he’s a poet writing verses and even small songs. As I’ve written above, Pukh is walking and talking swiftly and comes off as rather gnarly, especially when he sings. He shows hardly a facial expression and pauses from time to time looking into the camera and guessing what to say or do next. His blank looks are funny in itself and combined with brilliant timing define an animated performance as laconic as anything Buster Keaton or Kaurismäki have done.

He is a slow thinker, though. During his first conversation with Piglet he hardly makes eye contact and speaks in choppy phrases. He treats Piglet like a younger brother whose always one step behind but running to catch up. Piglet seems to look up to Pukh and do whatever he demands. Although Piglet is eager to help Pukh, he is still better at doing some things like inflating a balloon.

The emphasis on relationships and character interaction becomes especially apparent in the second film/chapter, where Pukh only gets stuck in the end for a few seconds. Instead the honey-eating part is expanded to show how Pukh is ignorant of the whole politeness concept and how he bosses around Piglet without coming off as a tyrant. In fact, Pukh not only washes his little friend’s face, he also ties a napkin over his mouth so that Piglet isn’t able to eat or say anything during the whole meal. Pukh soon forgets about his proudly displayed social manners when he learns that there is still more food for him.

Although Pukh only thinks about Rabbit's honey...

...he still remembers his manners.

What really makes these characters come to life are such small gestures like in the end when Pukh tries to grab Piglet’s hand to run off with him.

Final Thoughts
Having grown up with Disney’s Pooh featurettes, I was slightly disappointed the first time I saw Khitruks Vinni Pukh not because of its visual simplicity and charming stylization but because it was built around a different title character and most of all, everything I loved about Winnie the Pooh – notably the book and narrator interactions – was missing from this version.

Only after seeing all three Khitruk shorts a second time I began to see why everybody in Eastern Europe was so fond of Pukh. Gradually, the brisk pace and singing became a valuable alternative to the laid-back style of the Sherman Brothers’ songs that in my mind had become synonymous with Winnie the Pooh.

Although both film versions follow the book very closely, even down to the dialogue (according to the subtitles, at least), Khitruk’s substitution of CR with Piglet sounds like a major change but ultimately leads to less detached storytelling than in the Disney version. Pukh’s relationship with Piglet gives us an additional dimension not present in Winnie the Pooh and the Honey Tree* because it doesn't show when Pooh talks only to CR who he looks up to and not Piglet who looks up to him.

After all, and this is true for both adaptations, isn't it refreshing to have a protagonist who only cares about his well-being and never thinks about how his friends feel? Actually, the quirky Russian Pukh is also a more interesting character, simply because he isn’t always happy. I think it’s interesting to see what small decisions can lead to two different characters in roughly the same story.

*Piglet is present in later Disney featurettes, of course, but comes off as a rather different, timid and even stupid character.