Animation Short Review: The Six (2019) by Xu An and Xi Chen

With their latest black and white animated short film “The Six”, longtime collaborators Xu An and Xi Chen have added another successful festival movie to their filmography. “The Six” shows us six short scenes featuring a man, a woman and a crane. This, deceptively simple film, tells us a lot more than meets the eye.

“The Six” is screening at Vienna Shorts

What immediately stands out is the layout of the screen that is divided into three frames set against a black background. The central frame, where the main action takes place, is a rhomb-shaped cartouche showing us a room. On either side we see a moon, one with a crane and the other with a woman in it. At first glance these frames seem independent of each other. However, when the woman disappears and shows up in the main frame it becomes clear that all parts are interacting parts of the same story. The woman appearing seems to catch the eye of the man and causing him to leave and move into the next room.

The rooms are all identical, apart from some details like the vase on the side table and the number of seeds on saucer on that same table. So, the question arises if the man is moving from one room to the next or if it is the same room at a different point in time? First clue are the seeds. In every scene, their number equals the number in the previous scene after the man ate one. Also, the woman in all the rooms, and in the moon frame, is the same woman. And finally, during each scene, the moons go through all phases of the moon from new to full and vice versa, implying the progress of time.

The way of moving from one scene to the next is reminiscent of how the reading of a hand-scroll works. As the scroll unfurls, the narrative or journey progresses. Here the camera pans from one scene to the next instead. The directors have used this way of storytelling before in their short film “The Poem” (2015). There the choice seems obvious, as it resembles a poem on a scroll in style and content. Where “The Six” is concerned, the waxing and waning moons, the added cartouche and the flecks and slight jitter of the image also recall silent films and early early motion picture exhibition device such as the Kinetoscope.

The repetitive nature and the way this is visualized lend the short a poetic and philosophical dimension. This effect is emphasized by the hypnotizing, enthralling music that also repeats for every scene. The directors use all these tactics to portray the daily routine of the couple while highlighting simple everyday moments. They also give us a lot of clues as to the couple's happiness and the longevity of their relation such as the crane, the number six, and the detail of his reflection turning into a pig in the final scene. As if to encourage the viewers to look for those aspects in one's own life and to be happy with what we have.

The two directors Xu An and Xi Chen have been working together since 2007. Their films have been selected for the competition sections of international festivals such as Annecy and Stuttgart and their film “The Winter Solstice” won the International Jury Prize at the Hiroshima International Animation Festival in 2010. Even though the style of their films varies, they always use the same technique of cut out animation. This technique can be linked with Chinese culture and art in that resembles Chinese shadow plays. But China is not the only reference for the directors as their work is indebted to Igor Kovalyov and Estonian animators, such as Priit Parn. On top of that stylistically “The Six” and their earlier film “The Swallow” (2014) also seem to echo the black and white drawings of comic books, thus referring to Xi Chen's early career as a comic book artist.

“The Six” is a poetic film with a hypnotic quality that one can watch over and over without getting bored. It is a next step in the work of its makers showing that not only are they capable at telling a simple story in an effective way, they also are always researching new ways of visual storytelling.