Tim's Toons: Norway (and TFE) salutes Torill Kove
Thursday, September 3, 2015 at 9:33PM 
Tim here. It's a good time to be Torill Kove: the Norwegian-born animator/director, who has spent virtually her entire career working in Canada, received the Anders Jahre Prize in Oslo today (or yesterday, if you want to be strict about time zones). This award is given to artists at home and abroad who have enriched the cultural life of Norway, and while most of Kove's work has been funded by the invaluable National Film Board of Canada, there's no denying the national pride of her delicate, highly personal fables of life in Norway.
The easiest proof of Kove's prominence is to note that all three of the short films she has directed in her career were nominated for the Best Animated Short Oscar, and one won. Since the NFB, in its generosity and wisdom, has made two of those available online, there could be no better opportunity or excuse to wander through the imagination of one of contemporary animation's most vivid creators. [More...]
My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts (1999)
My Grandmother Ironed the King's Shirts by Torill Kove, National Film Board of Canada
Kove's debut film, after entering animation mostly as an impulse in her 30s, is a sweet coloring-book distillation of violent, fraught history into soft, comic images. This is for reasons that she flags early on: her grandmother, and her grandmother's stories, live on in Kove's memory in the form of gentle, friendly images. And so it is that we end up with one of the most effectively child-friendly narratives of anti-Nazi resistance that I, at least, have ever encountered.
The film's gentle tone, established by Kove's images and the happy recitation of the narration by Mag Ruffman, give it the general aura of a silly little goof. Scratch at it a little, though, and what reveals itself is an engaging notion of how national identity and grand historical events filter down to us as stories of individual action and feeling. It's a film that grounds the history of World War II in the personal and domestic every bit as successfully as it uses its cartoon aesthetic for much the same purpose. The result is a double tribute to her grandmother: as an unsung hero of her country, and as the vibrant storyteller whose presence was an obvious delight and comfort to Kove in her childhood. It doesn't reinvent the wheel, but it's terrific anyway, bright as it is cozy.
The Danish Poet (2006)
The Danish Poet by Torill Kove, National Film Board of Canada
Kove's Oscar winner happens to also be my least favorite of her films. The reason couldn't be easier to name: it's the only one that isn't primarily based on her family history, which robs it of some of its precision and emotional tenor. It's also a shaggy dog story in its way, dressing up a fairly conventional scenario of star-crossed love finally redeeming itself with a surprise that doesn't do much to give things the punch of personal connection that her other films come by so effortlessly.
So much for the pre-emptive grousing. Misgivings aside, The Danish Poet really is pleasant and charming, and in its weak Oscar year, it might well have been the stand-out. The presence of no less an icon of Scandinavian cinema than Liv Ullmann as the narrator certainly helps to give it story weight, though not because Ullmann lets fly with the ponderous sorrows of a Bergman performance, or any such thing. In fact, she turns out to be as tremendously gifted at reciting a meandering chain of anecdotes with warmth and a natural storyteller's talent for shifting the tale's rhythm as she is at plumbing the awful depths of human isolation. There's a twinkling gravity to her playful-serious recitation that fits perfectly with Kove's characteristic cartoon scrawls, and if that style is perhaps less obviously well-suited to this film than her others, it's no less appealing to the eye because of it.
Me and My Moulton (2014)
Not officially available online, though for the moment at least, you can see it here. Kove's most recent film is, I think, far and away her best work yet (which augurs well for her work to come): I enjoyed it just fine when I last talked about it here, but it has stubbornly wedged itself in my brain ever since then, and I'm convinced at this point that it's one of the most memorable and wise animated films I've seen in a long while.
Its quick, incisive depiction of off-kilter family relationships, through the limited perception of a 7-year-old girl, shares the deliberate childishness of My Grandmother Ironed... and also the craftiness of its apparent simplicity. But it's even richer here: if that film is an attempt to bring a child's awareness of a story to life, this one is more sneakily using childlike style and perception as a way of sidling around into a grown-up awareness of things that the child Kove only vaguely understood, using the visual and sonic trappings of childhood as a gentle ironic counterpoint. Absolutely great stuff, and so funny that you don't even need to think about its depths in order to find it utterly beguiling.
Reader Comments (3)
My Norwegian great grandmother Isabelle Nelson Schroeder and I thank you for sharing
i have been meaning to watch these FOREVER. everyone i know who has seen them loves them. so thanks for the kick in the pants about it
Great post Tim, as a Canadian I am all for any appreciation shown towards the NFB.
I have seen the first 2 of these, but not the third one. Thanks for the write-up, I hope anyone who is a fan of the gentle humour of Aardman Studios checks these out.
Thanks!