As the documentary begins, people are seen to be lining up, readying themselves to be thrown around in circles on this giant wheel. During the film, the narrator describes in the present tense the mundane but landmark moments of his life; birth, his first words, his first day at school, the first time he was beaten up, his first kiss, the first time he has sex, drinking through his teens, getting a degree, his girlfriend falling pregnant, the birth of his child etc. This follows through to old age and his untimely death by cancer, ending in an image of his eye, closing and fading away repeatedly, with the simple words: 'once upon a time there was a wheel'.
The themes in the film were immediately clear: the circle of life, the mundaneness of human activity and the relative unimportance of each of our existences in the universe. These existential themes come across in the film's form; an unoriginal idea reworked into a metaphor that is both striking and memorable. The zoetrope itself: a circle that begins and ends in one place and moves in one direction, much like the passage of time. I thought it was interesting that Hewis decided to put people on the zoetrope (as opposed to just mounting images onto it), and this demonstrates perfectly the way that the universe picks people up, throws them around for a while, and then their turn is over. The zoetrope as a wheel even puts paid to the phrase 'a cog in the universe'. For this reason, I think that the form of the film is very closely related to the themes, and the message that is put across in the telling of the narrator's life.
You could say that the film is persuasive; that the narrator wants you to look at his uninspiring earthly life and decide to live yours with a bit more excitement. I prefer to think that the film has a far bleaker outlook, and is more a comment on how unimportant we are in the grand scheme of things, and how routine and commonplace our lives become. It is a 'circle of life story': the life of a man is not that different to anyone else's and after he is gone, it is repeated again. This is reflected in the way that the images shown are repeated, demonstrating how this is not the first and last time events like this will take place.
The reason that the film is so appealing is related both to the audience and the filmmaker. As an audience, a life we are so used to seeing happen around us is so easy to relate to, especially when the film makes us think that ours will probably be exactly the same. In addition, the story feels personal to the filmmaker, and so we feel intimately drawn to the narration so as to know about Hewis himself. Knowing that Hewis studied animation and spends a large part of his work animating, we feel more closely aligned to him with his interesting alternative to animation and stop motion effects. Some could see the film as a case of technique over concept, but I think that the technique is what makes us believe in the filmmaker and his message.
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