You won't be disappointed!

hyped garbage

Good concept, poorly executed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

The first time I ever saw The Cathedral, I was sitting in Film class in high school. It was the only movie all year that I didn't want to end. It held my attention, from the beginning to the end. In fact I didn't even notice that I didn't blink until my contacts blurred over. The computer animation is just stunning, the soundtrack is beautiful, and the story is brilliant; there can be so many different interpretations. Once I saw The Cathedral, I wanted to watch it again and again. If you get a chance to see this film definitely see it, see what you think it means. You'll definitely have fun trying to figure out the meaning of it all.

Okay, so it's really good computer animation. Really good, visual and visceral and with all sorts of tones, shades, and personality.It also feels incredibly derivative of just general fantasy and science fiction archetypes. The Cathedral looks like Minas Terrath from the Lord of the Rings, the world looks like a mixture of Fantasia the movie and Phantasia the land from the Neverending Story, the silent character looks like any hero from CGI land and the music sounds like it was developed as the beginning to a video game.Is that necessarily bad? Well, I can't say I could care about anything that happened despite its visuality. It has a strong feeling of deja vu in it, which might in fact actually increase the ineffability or fatefulness of what happens but really just makes it seem all superfluous.--PolarisDiB

This is a mysterious, Gothic, fantasy vision crafted from the story by Polish sci-fi author Jacek Dukaj. There is no dialogue in the piece, only a haunting soundtrack that complements the expertly rendered CGI. And what great animation this is: a sense of gentle foreboding permeates every part of the beautiful and grandly scaled cinematography that is reminiscent of H.R. Giger with a dark palette in twilight shades and the surreal organic feel to the 'architecture'. The story starts with a young man leaning on his staff, taking in the huge vista of a sun setting behind a redly lava-rous world that takes up half the sky. As the line of night races past him we take in the scale of what can be seen to be a cathedral, behind him. He appears to sigh inwardly and turns to walk into the huge 'building'... You will probably watch this short over and over again back to back, as I did and, apparently, as did the jury of Siggraph 2002 that awarded this piece their prestigious "Best Animated Short" by unanimous vote. Since this is Tomek Baginski's first major release, I will look out for his subsequent work: to set such a high standard from the start could indicate a rare and special talent.

Anyone who's seen the new Star Wars movies, Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, The Matrix Reloaded and other heavy-CGI films can attest that the animation rarely conveys scope or true majesty: when you can tell something is fake, it's hard to let it take your breath away. However, The Cathedral is truly the first CGI I've seen that's left me in awe. The plot is elegantly simple, in fact, everything about this movie is elegant, beautiful and haunting. This is what CGI should be. Either this or Das Rad deserved to win the Oscar for best Animated Short.