Thee Wreckers Tetralogy consists of four animated short films made between 2009 and 2018, starting life as music videos for Thee Wreckers. They are supplemented by a documentary about the films and the band.
The four short films are: No Place Like Home (2009), Lonely Bones (2013), Splintertime (2015), Reruns (2018)
Director: Rosto
Writer: Rosto
The documentary is: Everything’s Different, Nothing Has Changed (2017)
Director: Joao MB Costa, Rob Gradisen
Part of: /slash Filmfestival
Seen on: 22.9.2018
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I hadn’t heard of Thee Wreckers and I really didn’t know what I was getting myself into with these films, but I admit that I found the films, the animation, the music of the short films pretty mind-blowing. The animation’s aesthetics, the music and the dreamlike narrative style caught me just right and I really managed to lose myself in them. Even though each installment of the tetralogy is very different, they go together very well and make for an all around beautiful body of work.

Read a little more about each of the short films after the jump.

No Place Like Home

No Place Like Home (you can watch it in its entirety here) tells a story of love and loss and grief. It’s a film that moves in a spiral to me, strong in its images and metaphors and so very sad.

Lonely Bones

Lonely Bones was probably the creepiest of the four films. Visually it was the one that impressed me the most, narratively it wasn’t as charaged as No Place Like Home. But I didn’t feel that it would have been necessary to expand on the narrative. The film works very well as is.

Splintertime

Splintertime was funny until it wasn’t funny at all anymore. I loved the dancing scene and, again, the visuals were stunning, but overall, it was probably my least favorite of the tetralogy.

Reruns

Reruns was (literally) the dreamiest of the four films, actually taking dreams as the starting point and not “just” following a dream logic. It uses that fact very effectively and I loved the idea of the dream city. It really is beautiful.

Everything’s Different, Nothing Has Changed

The last film is a documentary about Thee Wreckers and about their work on the short films, providing a look behind the scenes. Especially since I knew nothing about them going in, I enjoyed both the info about the band and the shoots, but I was also happy that it was a short documentary and didn’t last longer than it was. It was a good way to ease out of the tretralogy and the magical atmosphere it created.

Summarizing: Fantastic and very special.