Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Canvas’ on Netflix, a Moving Short Film About Love and Loss by a Pixar Animator

Netflix animated short Canvas is the product of filmmaker Frank E. Abney III, a veteran of Pixar’s animation department whose credits include Incredibles 2, Coco and the upcoming Soul. In-between films, he works on personal projects, first as an executive producer on Oscar-winning 2019 short Hair Love (which will soon be a series called Young Love on HBO Max), and now Canvas, a simple, but deeply moving story, entirely in pantomime, about a grieving grandfather and the granddaughter who helps him heal.

CANVAS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: A paintbrush on canvas. A man’s eye. A woman seated comfortably against a tree. Then, darkness. Beeping, like that of an electrocardiogram, or an alarm. The man awakes. He has stark white hair and beard. The pillow next to his has not been slept on. He’s alone in this house. He rolls his wheelchair into the yard, where an easel stands, empty. It’ll stay that way today, and probably tomorrow too.

A car pulls up the driveway. His daughter and granddaughter climb out. The daughter looks at him mournfully, kisses his forehead. The granddaughter rushes inside, sits at a little table, gets out paper and crayons. The picture she draws of herself and her beloved granddad him cheers him a little. Night comes, and her mother picks her up. Day after day, the empty easel. The granddaughter returns. She wanders down a darkened hall, discovers a door behind a rack of clothing, opens it. She finds a painting. On the canvas, a woman seated comfortably against a tree. It’s unfinished. She examines it, then Grandfather finds her.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: One can see the Pixar influence in the buoyant character design. Thematically, Canvas is something of a companion piece for Inside Out, which tackled the state of human emotions in a more complex and cerebral, but similarly profound, manner.

Performance Worth Watching: This actually is a performance worth hearing — Jermaine Stegall’s score is lovely and expressive without ever leading our emotions to obvious places.

Memorable Dialogue: This film is entirely dialogue-free.

Sex and Skin: None.

Our Take: Grief. Love. Loss. Family. Art. Anger. Mortality. Loneliness. Healing. In nine brief minutes and without a single spoken word, Canvas covers the spectrum of emotions in the grieving process. The grandfather feels frustrated by his creative block. His wife is gone. He knocks over the easel. His wife is still gone. His granddaughter arrives with a smile (and in a car with a license plate reading CHNWHLP — I translated it as “children will help”). His wife is still gone, but now he’s not alone.

Abney’s work here is evocative, simple, true. He depicts the mind’s eye of the grandfather as oil paint on canvas, and transitions to harsher, crisper, less forgiving lines for scenes in reality. The images in Canvas tell a story of transition; sometimes, when we’re in the throes of grief, we don’t realize that suppressing joyful memories is often more painful than confronting them. It takes the child’s innocence for him to realize that.

Abney uses the short-film medium to strip away the conventions of filmmaking — dialogue, contrived plot — and emphasize the raw emotion the characters are experiencing. The grandfather feels a deep ache, and we feel it too. But soon enough, hope runs just as deep.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Canvas is a wonderful and evocative short that covers a bounty of emotions in a brief amount of time.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Read more of his work at johnserbaatlarge.com or follow him on Twitter: @johnserba.

Stream Canvas on Netflix