Some people grieve best at long-awaited, awkward family reunions. Others stay up late talking with friends about all of their lost time. Some choose to throw celebrations of life in order to recognize their mixed emotions regarding the loss of a loved one. Filmmaker William David Caballero explores grief, along with all of its subsequent emotions of regret, heartbreak and even relief through multiple forms of animation and real-time documentary footage. In the partially animated documentary “TheyDream,” Caballero ponders not only what it means to grieve a loved one, but to grieve the achievements never celebrated and the conversations never had.
At the beginning of the film, Caballero establishes that he wants “TheyDream” to express hope and joy, exploring the gratitude he has for having such a loving family through an episodic structure. The film is split into ten-minute narratives, commemorating a separate member of the Caballero family who has recently passed on by recreating his memories of them through different forms of animation. Made with stop-motion within a realistic diorama of his childhood home, personal illustrations and performance capture-based animation inserted into modern footage of his mother’s home present a colorful manifestation of how relationships live through time. He begins by celebrating his father, then moves to his grandfather, grandmother and dog Gustavo. He notably discusses each of these relatives with his mother, whom he shares a close bond with.
One of the most impactful, and perhaps most relatable, aspects of “TheyDream” comes after these animated memory vignettes, when Caballero admits to his mother the frustrations he continues to bear toward deceased family members. This includes his father, who struggled to accept Caballero’s sexual identity. Conversations about generational trauma, acceptance and individuality answer questions that most are not brave enough to ask: Is it okay to store anger for those who have passed on? How much regret toward those relationships can we live with, and how does one release that moving forward?
Caballero experiments with “Avatar”-style animation as he records himself acting as different male family members while his mother plays his grandmother, bringing his deceased family members back to life in the process. These moments analyze the filmmaker’s relationship with the playful yet burdening traits that he inherited from his relatives. He actively wrestles with both love and resentment toward certain figures, due to unending sacrifice and conditional love over his sexual identity. He grants his mother a similar catharsis as she faces her regret for not being there at her own mother’s lowest. This animation practice serves as a resonant exploration of one’s relationship with their ancestors and shows how grief, resentment and joy exist in relationships with the deceased.
The success of “TheyDream” lies not only in Caballero’s ability to present a relatable depiction of grief and loss, but also in his exploration of what a documentary can be. As he stated in a Q&A after the film’s screening at the Ann Arbor Film Festival, “This film teaches you how to watch it as you watch it.”
His personal illustrations, computer-generated animations from recordings of him and his mother and stop-motion sequences weaved into real-life videography create a portrait of familial relations, grief and the relinquishment of regret. “TheyDream” is an achievement not only in animated documentary filmmaking, but also in the expression of what it is to be a human and to grieve.
Daily Arts Writer Audrey Kovtun can be reached at koaudrey@umich.edu.
