InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Hayden Kane There is, somehow, an interesting story here, as well as some good acting. There are also some good scenes

Raymond Sierra The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Geraldine The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Lee Eisenberg Tomasz Bagiński's "Sztuka spadania" ("Fallen Art" in English) poses the question of what constitutes glory amid war. The main character makes short movies featuring the dead bodies of soldiers pushed off of a springboard onto a slab of concrete. In short, he turns the soldiers' entire history into his own entertainment. I get the feeling that Bagiński made this as a reference to his own government's participation in the invasion of Iraq. Poland's government, like the rest of the governments in the so-called coalition of the willing, joined up with the invasion and occupation despite massive opposition among its population. I don't know how many people Poland lost in that most ill conceived of wars. There can be no doubt that it will weigh on the Poles' conscience for decades to come.Anyway, this is a good cartoon. The best cartoons are these short ones, as opposed to the features voiced by the celebrities of the moment.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) Not too long I watched Tomek Baginski's animated short films "The Kinematograph" and "The Animated History of Poland" (forgive me for not being able to spell the Polish original title) and tremendously enjoyed both of these. Now, in contrast to these two, "Sztuka spadania" or "Fallen Art" scored a big win with the BAFTA, but I can't say I prefer it more. That's mainly because the other two were pretty great and one is "only" good. The animation is great as always with Baginski, but the story didn't really compel me this time. It runs about 6 minutes and shows us the photograph from a (in the truest sense of the word) fallen soldier and how it gets into an insane man's collection of war memorabilia. The dancing sequence was one of the weirdest things I've seen in a while. I recommend this fairly odd film particularly to animation enthusiasts and no need to be scared by the language, because just like with the director's other works, you won't need to understand a single word Polish to appreciate this short movie.

MartinHafer I have now seen this short film twice. After reviewing it the first time, I received a well written message imploring me to reconsider my review and that I had missed the important anti-war message. So, I have just deleted my first review and have decided to try the film one more time--though I still am very surprised the film received the BAFTA award (the British equivalent of the Oscar).Before I even talk about the content of the film, the first thing that you are bound to notice is the absolutely breath-taking CGI. Despite not coming from a big-name studio like Pixar or Dreamworks, this computer animation is amazing--with rich details and better technical quality than I would have expected from such a company. They deserved lots of kudos for this.As for the content of the film, after looking at the film a second time, I could see the anti-war message just like I did the first time, but I won't go so far as to describe it as "point-less". Sure, there is a point to it--but I just don't think they made it very well. Those who are gung-ho anti-war folks will probably applaud its grotesque message. While I am not some pro-war nut, I just thought that the message was way, way too heavy-handed and gross. Sure, war is bad (duh) but I can think of at least a dozen films off the top of my head that said this better and in more subtle ways.Overall, technically great but not a film I heartily recommend.

edark It is not about how hard is producing animations. The topic is much more deep. The short tells how human life is wasted in making real the project of war. In war, soldiers are sent to die for beautiful causes like destroy Vietnam to save democracy, steal the oil of Iraq or make a cartoon with corpses.Only people who make war can feel "beautiful" that kind of art: the art of war.For example, Hitler wanted to make a perfect race, no matter the sacrifice done or people to kill: he sees art in what he does, but no other people, thats why the theater in the short is empty.Also you can find a superb animation and a fresh way to expose the anti-war message.