An Oscar-Worthy Animated Tale of Two Cosmonauts
A surprisingly touching film about the dream of spaceflight.
This may be heresy for space nuts, but in some ways I liked We Can’t Live Without Cosmos better than The Martian. Both films were nominated for Oscars (the former for animated short, the latter for best film), and neither won last night. Each of them, though, is memorable.
Russian animator Konstantin Bronzit says that “space is just a background” for his charming tale of two cosmonaut friends who share a dream. Maybe so, because this 15-minute cartoon has a soulfulness and humanity that often gets lost in tech-centric space dramas. And it’s worth noting that, unlike in The Martian or Gravity, the characters are trying to get to space, not away from it.
You can watch the Oscar-nominated short online, courtesy of The New Yorker.
