The House of Small Cubes

Animation, written by Kenya Hirat, directed by Kunio Kato. Japan.

An old man lives in a little house atop a mighty tower. All but his room is underwater. There is a whole city down there, teetering spires narrowing to a few little shacks on the surface. The old man fishes through a hatch in the floor and drinks a glass of wine each night.

One morning the water has risen and come into his house, so he builds another, slightly smaller house on top and moves in. A hatch opens into the flooded house below and enables him to fish. But he drops his pipe!

Donning scuba gear he enters the flooded levels, retrieving his pipe but being assailed by memories of the life he lead in each progressively deeper domicile. Descending to the very bottom he finds a wine glass, half of a toast he drank with his wife the day they moved into their first, ground-level home, before the flood.

Returning to the surface he fills the retrieved glass, then his own.

Ting!