Even when I appreciate and enjoy the incredible originality from Priit Pärn's shorts ("1895", "The Night of the Carrots" and "Karl and Marilyn") most of those shorts feel somewhat random and without very much sense. (But I still liked them a lot, though.)
However, of all his works, this is by far my favorite one. Not only for the use of many different visual styles (All of them very well done) but also because the story, while at first seems as something random or disjointed, starts making sense at it advances, having a valid message and very accurate satirical elements.
In many ways, this the most serious works from Priit Pärn, being way darker and pessimistic than the rest of his shorts. "Hotel E" maintains a solemn tone from the very beginning, almost without anything of comedy. Even the very few glimpses of what could be considered hints of humor doesn't feel very happy or have a satirical purpose.
The most fascinating aspect from this short, however, it's the use of different styles of animation from every part of the story: The introduction is particularly dark and gives an atmosphere of fear and sadness, having the same feeling of many shorts produced by Soyuzmultfilm, which evokes the Yuriy Norshteyn shorts (Though it is clearly done from a much more pessimistic and bleak perspective) The second "introduction", instead, uses a more polished and realistic visual style (Like the shorts from the Russian animator Anatoliy Petrov) which looks incredibly beautiful, portraying an idealized version of reality through allegories.
Then, there is the "epilogue" (Actually, the longest part of the short) called "The American Dream". In this part of "Hotel E", two different visuals styles are used in order to portray two completely different realities: One is bright, colorful and "mundane", representing the "American Dream", while the other is chaotic, unstable and dark, symbolizing the situation of many communist countries during the early nineties.
In the parts concerning to the "American Dream" the visual style is pleasant, and the psychedelic use of colors it's simply magnificent (Probably done as an homage to artist as Andy Warhol.) In this "reality" the characters are immersed in banal and, at first sight, completely pointless activities that could be seem just merely as hedonist attitudes. Their relationships are shown to be distant and informal, with the youth having a more active role.
A door separates the "American Dream" reality with a zone filled with chaos, where the characters are filled with fear and confusion; they are also involved in many apparently pointless activities which seem to have very serious consequences. From this "reality" there is one characters who moves to the idealized "American Dream" reality, trying to find help him and the others, but things aren't that easy.
Finally, there is a brief sequence, that looks like a spoof of the classic slapstick cartoons that are produced in the United States (Like the Looney Tunes or Tom and Jerry) which serves as a closure for this allegorical tale, that even when at first seems like something obscure or hard to understand, works perfectly well to illustrate the experience lived by many countries that were experiencing the end of communism and socialism. But for modern viewers, it still have a valid message about the differences existent between the rich and the poor, and how those differences make them conceive the reality from a completely different perspective. However, those two different "realities" are always connected, and can't be ignored.
"Hotel E" is an underrated short that deserves way much more recognition. For me, it was the best work from Priit Pärn.
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