Yuriy Norshteyn’s Hedgehog in the Fog in 1975 is what Walt Disney hoped to achieve when he first released the classical compilation of the animated Fantasia in 1940. In Hedgehog, Norsteyn creates something so magically enchanting and eerily phantasmic that in a mere ten minutes, you will be completely awe struck by the artistry that went into each frame. Recommended to me by Allan Estrella, I finally watched this little gem of a short film after a long day and contemplation about what write about today; and frankly, I couldn’t be thankful that on a whim, I perused my film collection and clicked on this title out of sheer curiosity – and what a stroke of luck it was. The premise is this:
On his way to meet his friend Bear for star gazing, the little Hedgehog sees a magnificent white horse in the thick fog, and wonders if if would drown in the chance it fell asleep in the white of night. To satisfy his curiosity, Hedgehog goes on in to explore it for himself – amongst which he discovers beautiful and frightening aspects of the unknown.
What’s so intriguing and engaging about Hedgehog in the Fog is that contrary to Norshteyn’s American colleague Disney, the Russian filmmaker indulges not in the appeal of bright colors and friendly looking anthropomorphic characters, but instead draws out a darker palette and rougher animation style. Amazingly, the entire film is stop-motion – more specifically, it’s cut-and-paste stop-motion, where characters are animated by drawings that are cut out, captured on camera, and done again (this is a similar to how the original South Park episodes were animated before they received a mega computer from LucasArts). Like all stop-motion films, the entire process of creating Hedgehog was, as I can imagine, tedious and exceptionally time consuming. Similar to Disney’s Fantasia, Norshteyn’s Hedgehog in the Fog is heavily dependent on the musical composition to convey the colors and sounds of emotions – from the light flute of fantastical to the harsh strings of scares, the Russian film could easily be considered a music-based film interspersed with short dialogue and a overseeing narrator to inform us of key details. Most of all, it makes Norshteyn’s ten minute film a uniquely auteuristic gem in the small world of animated shorts.
I say this with the utmost confidence because besides The Very Hungry Caterpillar, there are very few cut-and-paste stop-motion films I can think of off the top of my head. Cut-and-paste animation is incredibly elementary, yet it speaks volumes when an animator can create such an engaging story that aesthetically diverges from comforting feel-good Disney fare. More importantly, Hedgehog is really a story that resonates deeply from childhood memories: we can all remember those times we went exploring beyond something normal, to find something awe inspiring and terrifying at the very same time. Reason and logic leave us: this is something new, undiscovered, mystifying – our emotions run amok, dominating the very way we perceive something to be or not to be. A normal tree becomes a overbearing entity; a squirrel is really a mischievous, plotting squabbler; a leaf turns out to be the deadliest weapon in the entire world; a tiger appears out from the corner of your eye, regardless that you’re actually in North America; and so on.
There are, of course, common motifs that we can see in Norshteyn’s story. The white horse in the fog is one of purity and mysterious evanescence, blending into the white fog so easily and instantly emerging as a solid entity the next second. The eagle-owl is one of judgement, its bulging eyes constantly alert in case Hedgehog makes a mistake; the dog is one of loyalty and trust, a do-gooder during a time of clout; and the mysterious Somebody in the river, the entity that selflessly aids the protagonist in a moment of need for no other reason than to be kind and helpful. These character archetypes are all too familiar to many of us, especially veterans of Western mythology. Simultaneously, these characters also resonate ever so strongly with childhood enthusiasm and fears, the primal emotions that define our young adolescence so definitively and strongly into black and white, good and bad, yes and no.
When we are young and know less of the world than eventually will become integral of our minds, the world itself is something of colors and sounds, of highs and lows in the spectrum of amazing and frightening entities. We know not of the in-betweens, the subtle nuances that make up a individual or situation that otherwise discolor the black or whiteness, good or badness. We experience sensory stimuli from our environment, taking in everything as we perceive them to be. The way green grass smells after its freshly cut, the airlessness of swinging oh so high, the unimaginable ghosts and demons that lurch out from the dark, the comfort and familiarity of a home and soft, inviting bed – childhood is extremely visceral, and its oftentimes why we tend to remember it in an exaggerated light relative to the events that actually took place around us.
Hedgehog dives into this viscerality of experiences and emotions, utilizing the white of fog as a smothering of judgement, rational and logic. We’re tossed into the unknown and bewilderment along with Hedgehog, episodes of fright and awe and all. And by the time we’re released from the fog, we can’t help but feel a little shaken – both good and bad, but mostly a strong shake from childhood past.
Upon further reading, I learned that the esteemed Hayao Miyazaki considers Hedgehog in the Fog one of his favorite animated films, and that Yuriy Norshteyn a great artist. And after watching ten minutes worth of haunting auteurism and resonating storytelling, I can definitely relate to why Miyazaki considers the Russian film and filmmaker with such high regard.
Additional Screenshots with Small Descriptions
The opening title that instantly caught my attention. Its silhouette aesthetic with the deep blue night sky with small, shimmering stars is something I rarely see in many animated features.
This is a very nice screenshot that shows the rougher, sketchier style and darker coloring of Norshteyn as compared to his contemporary, Walt Disney, who opted for cleaner lines and brighter palette.
I thought the fog effect was brilliant throughout. It has a delegate painter’s touch – almost airbrushing, to that extent – and it was lovely to see how Hedgehog and other environmental aspects merged and faded in with the overlapping fog.
A small, glowing firefly amongst the confusion and thickness of clouting, white fog - a beacon of light and guidance, essentially.
It’s difficult to see here, but the animators managed to incorporate realistic water footage into the scene where Hedgehog floats down the river. The effect is both realistic and animatedly stylized.
A sweet moment between Bear and Hedgehog as they gaze up upon the beautiful, star shimmering skies of the navy blue night.
The last shot of the entire film, focusing exclusively on the beauty and ambiguity of the white horse of the white fog, and appropriately left unanswered.
Additional Links
• Hedgehog in the Fog – you can watch this short film on YouTube
• The Very Hungry Caterpillar – another classic cut-and-paste stop-motion short film that you can watch on YouTube as well.