Poetic Fantasies of Time and Space: From the Eyes of an Old Dog
Fig. 1 - Madame Souza’s house in The Triplets of Belleville (Sylvain Chomet, 2003).
In Sylvain Chomet’s first animated feature film, The Triplets of Belleville (2003) there is a key scene in which the main event simply concerns the barking of a dog out of the window at a passing train. This scene, which is going to be explored here in this sequence analysis, connects the childhood of Champion, the film’s main character, to the present time (of the film’s narrative, which takes place around 1950s), when we meet him as a young cycling athlete training for Tour du France, accompanied by his ever present, loving and supportive grandmother Madame Souza. Yet, this ‘transitory’, rather unimportant ‘barking’ scene that is more about passage of time, uses a quite poetic language to build an unusual kind of fantasy about the world as it is seen, felt and experienced by an old dog, in a rather slow and observational manner. The introduction of the setting as modern, fast, moving, and crowded is put into sharp contrast to what is present at the Champion and Madame Souza’s house/world as old, quiet, slow and silent. I would argue, in this little poetic gem of a scene, Bruno, the old fat dog and his loneliness plays a central role in creating the whimsical atmosphere and fresh approach to fantastic ambiance of the whole film. This barking scene, with no human action, has no real ‘function’ within the narrative. However, in Chomet’s film, with its unusual aesthetic style and in a world where you cannot read people’s intentions and emotions from their spoken words or facial gestures, Chomet has implemented alternative vehicles of meaning, emotions and moods to be conveyed by unusual channels. This scene, as will be discussed, is one of those pivotal channels of signification in the absence of any words or dialogue, we get to know a lot about Bruno, and the new times, much before we are introduced to the young Champion and his grandma, who will shape the rest of the story.
Fig. 2 — The Triplets of Belleville.
The sequence begins by a transition from the last scene of Champion’s boyhood happily cycling on his new tricycle gift round the small yard in an autumn afternoon, as Bruno is running and chasing his movements joyfully round a circle and grandma knitting in satisfaction. As the camera moves out of this long-shot of the two going round the yard in a high angle while the colourful autumn leaves pass by the lonely old cottage and the beautiful landscape (Fig. 1), it smoothly dissolves to a long-shot of the little tall cottage in the middle of a deep rural landscape with very few houses in sight, and the Eiffel Tower deep into the background. Within a few seconds and a series of transitory dissolves of the same landscape accompanied by a slow paced music, the village and lonely scenery transforms into a crowded place with lots of buildings, frequent airplanes flying by and rotating cranes as the seasons and years come and go. Then with a cut to a final long shot and rumbling of thunder, we see a totally transformed landscape in which the little tall cottage, now old and worn out, is tilted, pressed by a new trestle bridge as part of a railway while we also witness a change of colour palette from a bright autumn one to darker, glummer tones of grey that prevail the scene (Fig. 2).
Fig. 3 - Bruno sits quietly inside Madame Souza’s home.
Our entrance to a new time period starts on a dark stormy night, within the more expanded village and Champion’s now slanting house yielding to the nuisance of the modern high trestle bridge, to let trains pass by right next to the window of the dog’s room upstairs. The metal postman on the bicycle wind vane rotates on the roof, while we see half of the face of the now old Bruno reaching out and looking out of the window towards the darkness, and silence (Fig. 3). As a 2D drawn animated pet dog and not an animal character, Bruno has a range of facial expressions especially around his eyes and eyebrow, similar to Gromit in Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit films. While he is not an anthropomorphised animal character, Bruno shows curiosity, sadness, boredom and anger in his face. As an old dog in the main part of the narrative, he has a heavy body which drags lamely and laboriously, although he is mostly resting and asleep, and even dreaming about people on trains in black and white.
Three short shots introduce more of the modern setting: we see Bruno in a wider frame of the same shot, from behind, inside the room, wagging his tail. Next, we see a long shot of the house, the window and the full picture of the bridge and rails from another angle, while underneath the bridge there is the silence of a dark night and scattered lights coming from some buildings. Here we see the lights of a train approaching from deep in the frame. Before it can come close to us/camera, a cut to the trembling sight and sound of the metal wind vane and another to the room where things are shown to shake really hard, suggest the immensity of the train’s speed and movement, as we go back to the previous long shot of the train that now comes furiously towards us, and a fast cut shows it from a much nearer size as we face its rapidly passing windows and the shadow of the people inside. A matching cut shows the rest of the train’s fast move from above, and the dog’s head out of the window barking fiercely at it. Cut to the barking dog from the back inside the room, stretching up and squashing down and fervently barking, while we see in nearer planes, part of an adult bicycle leaning to the wall, with tire-less rims (if at all noticed in the first viewing, it is telling of the Champion’s current situation as a cycling athlete). This very energetic scene cuts into a close shot of the train’s windows swiftly entering the frame, in which the passengers are closely and sharply visible and then as if the train stops for a second in a slow-motion scene, things and people start to move very slowly: the passengers in a carriage as they look at the window, and a howling Bruno visible deep at the back of the frame looking at them (Fig. 4). When the train begins to move fast again, Bruno resumes his aggressive barking. Bruno’s barking at trains ultimately becomes a recurring motif within the film narrative, funny perhaps as a frequent joke, but also witty and meaningful; shown from his first encounter with a toy train as a poppy to his intimidating though futile woofing at the trains passed by the house and other trains in his later adventures accompanying Madame Souza across the Atlantic in her pursuit of Champion who is kidnapped by French Mafia.
Fig. 4 - The train rapidly passes the windows, prompting Bruno’s fierce barking.
A cut to the window as Bruno’s final woofing calms down the frame in silence and darkness again, as it does the swirling of the rusty wind wane man. A close-shot of his face resting on the window sill gloomily and down again, is cut to inside the room as Bruno turns towards the camera, lagging his old fat body downstairs and throwing his heavy mass onto the floor of the house’s entrance space (interestingly, we see his coming down of the staircase TWICE, one from upstairs reaching the ground floor, and one from downstairs, each time he is seen to complete the action, so this is not a match-cut). Lying on the floor, a rectangular frame of light emanating from the door lite is falling on his body, as the lightning flashes in and out inside the lobby space, and illuminates the brighter frame around Bruno, we hear the thunder and the pouring rain begin. A close shot of Bruno’s bored yet anticipating eyes who looks bleakly cuts into a shot showing the clock (it is 6:40 in the evening) and then a shot of a smooth camera move getting closer at the glass pane (Fig. 5). Thus we see Bruno’s anticipation and disappointment and perhaps questions (Where are they? When are they going to come, then?) in two POV shots. These must be POVs of Bruno, since they are seen from a very low angle (where his eyes are), and the second one moves closely towards the glass pane with dripping rain on it, the shadows of which are seen on Bruno’s face and body in his close-shots. It suggests that Bruno is focusing on the glass pane, or perhaps ‘thinking’ in a not-so-patient eagerness.
Fig. 5 - Bruno’s POV shots from a low angle.
The poetic sense of silent slowness gives enough ‘time’ to the spectator to ‘observe’ and comprehend the meticulously designed and thought ‘space’ of indoors and outdoors (and to take in the narrative information and cultural references implemented within each shot in the background spaces). We seem to be observing the very quirky fantasy world Chomet is illustrating for us through the eyes of Bruno, who has to comprehend an abundance of sensory stimuli: this is too much for him, and he assumes it as an enemy to which he has to show his unfriendliest of manners. The time also seems to stretch for Bruno and us as spectators, as we wait with him, in anticipation for his owners to come home. But, who can say, whether an old dog feels and experiences the sluggishness of time passing, and how he feels boredom, impatience and confusion. In The Triplets of Belleville, animation is able to let us live through these emotions via a unique language that can carefully treat time and space, not easy to describe, yet surely experienced by people and dogs!
**Article published: May 13, 2020**
Biography
Fatemeh Hosseini-Shakib is an animation and media researcher born in Tehran, Iran 1971. Having completed her PhD in animation studies in the UK (UCA, Farnham) in 2009, Fatemeh is a lecturer in animation theory/aesthetics at the Animation Department, Faculty of Cinema and Theatre of Tehran Art University, Iran. Fatemeh’s main research interest is aesthetic realism in animation within social and historical contexts and its relation to the evolution of techniques and technologies especially in CG animation. Another ongoing preoccupation and research is Iranian animation; making sense of and documenting its rapidly changing history, and economics.