Harvie Krumpet
Animated film, Australia 2003
This black comedy tells the story of an outsider, who is struck by some misfortunate blows of faith and suffers numerous bad breaks and still somehow manages to get by.
Some are born great.
Some achieve greatness.
Some have greatness thrust upon them.
And then there are the others……
One of these “others” is Harvek Milos Krumpetzki. HARVIE KRUMPET is the biography of an ordinary man seemingly cursed with perpetual bad luck. A 22 minute claymation film by Adam Elliot, narrated by Geoffrey Rush. HARVIE KRUMPET is the biography of an ordinary man. Brought up in a Polish forest with his father, (a lumberjack), and mother, (suffering from lead poison), we observe a person seemingly cursed with bad luck. Born with Tourette’s Syndrome, Harvie is marginalised from the rest of village and gets used to having stones thrown at him as a child.
At the age of eighteen his parents are found frozen to death on their bicycles, just as the Germans invade and force Harvie to flee to Australia where he works in a rubbish dump. Bad luck follows him to Australia where he goes in and out of hospital on a regular basis; from being struck by lightning to having his testicle removed, his misfortune seems unending.
He does, however, find love when Nurse Valerie Burstall walks into his ward. They get married and move into Val's flat with her two cats and diseased parrot. They adopt a little girl called Ruby, (when Harvie is diagnosed sterile), and many happy years follow.
On Harvie's 65th birthday, Val suddenly dies, leaving Harvie alone in life again. He quickly ages, is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and is shifted into a nursing home after a neighbor finds him trying to withdraw cash from the microwave. Instead of withering away, Harvie finds rejuvenation and excitement with a fellow Alzheimer's patient, Hamish McGrumbel. Together they entertain the other residents with their mischievous acts; getting drunk, practical jokes, escaping from the home and naked puppet shows.
Despite these high jinks, Harvie's condition worsens and he falls in and out of hallucinations and depression, almost opting for suicide before being saved by a very special woman who enters his life and steers him to a new realization about life. In the end Harvie lived by the motto: “Life is like a cigarette, smoke it to the butt".
Director / Screenplay: Adam Elliot
Narrator: Geoffrey Rush
Length: 22 min
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