Large Fierce Mammal

Icarus augers in (bottom right between ship and shore), to the complete disinterest of the local population. Click to enlarge.

Tonight’s Dark Sentiment was directed by Marek Skrobecki, and was inspired by the song Danny Boy. Described by the director —

“A seemingly ordinary city is inhabited by people suffering from a serious condition strangely enough, their headlessness does not seem to bother them much. Headless individuals walk in haste and chaos around the town, stumbling and falling all the time. The blindness of the city inhabitants is in fact a kind of social disease, of a mass stupefaction. Duped by “headlessness”, a reference to 20th-century totalitarian ideologies, those people follow an irrational blindness. Together, they create a mindless, intolerant community. It is the protagonist – the only one, colloquially speaking, to have his head screwed on the right way – who seems to feel the most lost and lonely in this “headless” crowd. As he wanders the city streets, Danny Boy is constantly filled by dread and sadness at the sight of its headless, duped and aimlessly hard-pressed inhabitants. In the privacy of his home, he slowly constructs a machine which will help bring his solitude to an end …

“The final scene of this 10-minute animated film presents Danny Boy walking away as a dramatic event happens in the background: a plane hits one of twin towers visible on the horizon. It seems that the catastrophe comes completely unnoticed by the inhabitants of the city suffering from the ‘headlessness’. The tragedy of the passengers of the hijacked plane or of the people trapped in the skyscraper is left on the sidelines of everyday life, like the fall of Icarus in the Bruegel’s painting. The last individual who might have been able to use his brains and watch the world in a critical way gives this capacity up, preferring to lead a happy mindless life with his beloved woman, intolerant of his otherness.” ~ Danny Boy – Marek Skrobecki

Lest the final scene of this film be viewed as some sort of swipe at US domestic and foreign policy, as I understand the intent of those who made it, and view it myself, this is painted with a much broader brush. The visual reference of 11 September 2001 is etched upon the public consciousness of the world, both in horror and delight depending on nationality and inclination, and therefore offers a powerful monument to the perils of willful blindness. Rest assured that a generation as yet unborn will declare these events meaningless by virtue of either being deserved, “in the past”, or both.

Maybe vodka again tonight. Leave the wyborowa in the freezer and go with the stuff you serve the hooples.