On Lightning Striking

The animated short film Paperman produced by Walt Disney Animation studios just makes my heart melt like a gooey chocolate lying in the warm summer sun.

It's Disney romance at its best: a setting so recognizable to many of us young professionals but infused with the perfect dose of Disney magic, no words necessary, just the characters' eyes and an amazing underscoring musical composition... that one first glance, love at first sight...do you remember that feeling? Have you ever felt it? - Swoon - I bet this ingenious love story will get many shares with Valentines nearing...maybe you could send it to that special someone who you never dared speak to...

The sudden feeling of lightning striking and the dreaming what-if feeling really remind me of one of my favorite poems by Charles Baudelaire (first the original in French, then a translation by William Aggeler)

À une passante

La rue assourdissante autour de moi hurlait.

Longue, mince, en grand deuil, douleur majestueuse,

Une femme passa, d'une main fastueuse

Soulevant, balançant le feston et l'ourlet;

Agile et noble, avec sa jambe de statue.

Moi, je buvais, crispé comme un extravagant,

Dans son oeil, ciel livide où germe l'ouragan,

La douceur qui fascine et le plaisir qui tue.

Un éclair... puis la nuit! — Fugitive beauté 

Dont le regard m'a fait soudainement renaître,

Ne te verrai-je plus que dans l'éternité?

Ailleurs, bien loin d'ici! trop tard! jamais peut-être!

Car j'ignore où tu fuis, tu ne sais où je vais,

Ô toi que j'eusse aimée, ô toi qui le savais!

— Charles Baudelaire

To a Passer-By

The street about me roared with a deafening sound. 

Tall, slender, in heavy mourning, majestic grief, 

A woman passed, with a glittering hand 

Raising, swinging the hem and flounces of her skirt;

Agile and graceful, her leg was like a statue's. 

Tense as in a delirium, I drank 

From her eyes, pale sky where tempests germinate, 

The sweetness that enthralls and the pleasure that kills.

A lightning flash... then night! Fleeting beauty 

By whose glance I was suddenly reborn, 

Will I see you no more before eternity?

Elsewhere, far, far from here! too late! never perhaps!

For I know not where you fled, you know not where I go,

O you whom I would have loved, O you who knew it!

— William Aggeler, The Flowers of Evil (Fresno, CA: Academy Library Guild, 1954)

I really hope that the short will win its received nomination for the Best Animated Short film at the 85th Academy Awards (the Oscars ;) ). Not only because the story is so endearing to all of us hopeless romantics out there, but also because the technology behind it merges the best of two worlds for the first time by bringing together the 'old-school' 2D drawing and CG technology (computer generated animation). 

Credits for Paperman:

Directed by John Kahrs

Produced by Kristina Reed and John Lasseter

Voices by John Kahrs and Kari Wahlgren

Music by Christophe Beck

Animation by Patrick Osborne (animation supervisor)