The Wild-Tempered Clavier

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Reviewed by: Jennie Kermode

The Wild-Tempered Clavier
"Animating on toilet paper, which soaks up colour in unpredictable ways, would never be easy, but Samo has challenged herself further by creating each frame based on memory and instinct."

Sometimes, under pressure, the need to create is so strong that one uses whatever comes to hand. In times of chaos, when direction is uncertain, the act of creation can begin before one knows what the subject will be. Both these things apply to Anna Samo’s experimental short, now on the 2025 Oscar Shortlist, which explores the act of animation and artistry as a form of resistance.

The project begins with a traditional editing set-up of the sort used by animators – primarily in the past – to paint directly onto film stock, frame by frame. The difference here is that the set-up has been assembled from everyday objects of the sort an artist might found lying around on her desk, and instead of reels of film, it uses rolls of toilet paper. Samo daubs these with ink, at first uncertainly, but with a theme gradually emerging. A pianist is trying to settle down to play – presumably Bach’s Prelude And Fugue In C Major, which we hear on the soundtrack – but is distracted by other events, most notably a war. The piano keeps slipping away, and it and the pianist change in size, struggling to remain part of the same frame of reference.

It’s a messy process. Animating on toilet paper, which soaks up colour in unpredictable ways, would never be easy, but Samo has challenged herself further by creating each frame based on memory and instinct, without looking at the preceding one. This creates a series of images which, as they move, seem to shift and flow in keeping with the aforementioned chaos. Nevertheless, key visual motifs remain clear. There is a dreamlike quality to it, as if we were peering directly into her imagination without the usual filters. The imperfection is the point. In a world where the imagery we encounter is ever more slick and unreal, The Wild-Tempered Clavier is a distinctly human creation, and much richer for it.

Ironically, the biggest challenge it faces comes not from the medium but from the music. The pacing and mood of this don’t always fit, especially as the toilet rolls dictate their own rhythm, running out at different points in the storytelling process, sometimes tearing and having to be re-spliced. There’s an entertaining inventiveness about this which balances the darker aspects of the subject matter. In completion, it remains, boldly, a work in progress.

Reviewed on: 13 Jan 2025
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The Wild-Tempered Clavier packshot
A depiction of the animation process using toilet paper in place of film, exploring an attempt to create art in a chaotic world.

Director: Anna Samo

Writer: Anna Samo

Year: 2024

Runtime: 7 minutes

Country: Germany

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