Symphony No. 42 (2014)

Symphony No. 42 Review

Symphony No. 42 is a 2014 Hungarian animated short film directed by Reka Busci. It’s an artistic, but uneven film.

Forty-seven brief but vivid vignettes about the paradoxical nature of our world, seamlessly intertwine perplexing scenes of poetical absurdism with the ironic, the grotesque and the beautiful. My main issue with this film is that it’s very much one of those instances of style over substance. It has nothing to say at the end of the day, being too ambiguous and slight in its plot.

The animation is gorgeous, there is no question about that. The visual aesthetic is one that is very artistic, uniquely European and very colorful. The score, sound and editing are strong and the movie works as a collection of authentic, mostly memorable vignettes that are stylistically and thematically diverse. But in that diversity the movie lost its coherence and connective thread.

Symphony No. 42 has a strong visual style to it, but it lacked the plot and thematic resonance that would have elevated it beyond being a style over substance flick.

My Rating – 3.5