Anna & Bella

Børge won the Academy Award for Anna & Bella in 1985. Mark Mayerson wrote a fantastic article about it. Below you find a part of the blog post. If you want to read the full post, please click the link at the bottom.

By Mark Mayerson | Monday, May 15, 2006

If you haven’t seen this film by Borge Ring, please watch it before you read what’s below. I’d hate to spoil it for anybody. This is one of my favourite animated films. I’m going to end up writing about it in somewhat technical terms, but what makes the film great are the feelings that it evokes. The design hits the sweet spot between realism and caricature. The designs are realistic enough to support the emotions and events in the story, but still caricatured enough to allow for cartoonyness in the acting and the timing. One of the things that make shapes appealing in animation is their pliability. Flesh yields. We hug things whose surfaces are pliable, whether it’s other humans, pets or stuffed toys. We don’t hug rocks. There’s a softness to how these characters are drawn and move that’s enormously appealing…. Click here.