‘Borrowed Time’: A Short Pixar Tale of the Darker Variety

Borrowed Time employs Pixar’s trademark animation design to narrate a tale that is dark and grim nature.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter/@BTAnimatedShort)

Pixar, an animation studio best known for its delightful offerings aimed at younger audiences has in the past tried its hand at story telling by exploring sombre themes. However, its plots have never gone darker until they released their new short movie – Borrowed Time created by two of its animators – Lou Hamou-Lhadj and Andrew Coats.

Borrowed Time employs the studio’s trademark animation style to narrate a tale of grimmer variety than its usual offerings.

The movie starts with visuals of the sad protagonist – an old worn out Sheriff from the wild west– atop a cliff only to be quickly taken back to memories of his younger days where he is seen travelling with his father. The sequence is accompanied with background music to fill your heart with deep sense of melancholy which soon turns into horror as we see the protagonist accidentally shoot his father who falls off a cliff.

In the duration of six minutes the animated film takes unexpected twists and turns, introducing us to the guilt, pain and fate, with minimal verbal engagement.

This short movie is arguably the darkest piece of animation work to have come out of the Pixar studios.

Watch the full movie below.

Explaining the idea behind this grim tale, co-director Lou Hamou-Lhadj said:

A goal for us was to make something that kind of contested the notion of animation being a genre, and one for children specifically...We really wanted to make something that was a little bit more adult in the thematic choices, and show that animation could be a medium to tell any sort of story.