H.C. Andersen's The Long Shadow

A delightful reinterpretation of Andersen's life and work by the veteran Danish animator Jannik Hastrup, beginning with the great storyteller's fanciful, solitary boyhood and ending with his wistful, solitary death. Loneliness seems to be the long shadow here: the film posits Andersen's fervent imagination as being at least partly fired by his documented celibacy and unrequited passions, which forced him back on the companionship of a pet ugly duckling he calls Emma, his own wayward shadow, and the Devil himself. Shadow and Satan naturally find common cause, but in the last resort the power of Andersen's writings and fame grant him a bitter-sweet salvation. Hastrup mixes watercolours and inks, focusing on story, but occasionally letting loose with flights of freeflowing expressionism or apposite whimsy.