Gauche the Cellist

A film about a cellist in an orchestra. Gauche plays in the small orchestra of a town and he is the worst in it. The conductor stops him alone in rehearsal and criticises him in front of everyone. The concert is close. Gauche goes home and practises alone at night. Then animals start coming. First a cat, then a cuckoo, a badger cub and a family of mice. Each of them wants something. The cat a piece, the cuckoo the correct note, the badger the rhythm, and the mouse the vibration of the sound for her sick child. Gauche loses his temper every time. He plays anyway. From there the film becomes a story about learning. What the animals ask for are exactly the places where he is lacking, and he does not notice. What the narrative is interested in is not music but the teacher: the film describes how learning is possible in the absence of a master, and here the teachers do not even speak. The day of the concert comes and the orchestra plays well. Gauche understands what happened backstage. The music is inside the narrative. Beethoven's sixth symphony is at its centre and the passages are given at their real playing length. The source is a story by Kenji Miyazawa. The production took a long time. The film was completed at a small studio with a limited crew over work spread across years; Isao Takahata returned to the project again and again in that period. It runs a little over sixty minutes. Who it is for: anyone who likes calm, music-centred animation and Takahata. Who it is not for: anyone expecting pace; the film is slow, repetitive and deliberately small.