Pearl review: literalising the road of life

I have a big soft spot for Pearl: director Patrick Osborne’s five-and-a-half minute 360 video set entirely inside a car, with us riding shotgun. It might sound cheesy to say that this lovely animated experience, which became the first VR production to be nominated for an Academy Award, is about “the road of life” or “the journey rather than the destination,” though that is indeed the case. Osborne brings all the feels, using the vehicle as a dramatic space to explore the bond between a father and daughter, time-hopping through various emotions and circumstances. A sweet, catchy song titled No Wrong Way Home plays throughout, lyrics such as “it’s not where you’re from but where you belong” reiterating the importance of home and family.

I love Pearl partly because it’s a great (and rare) example of maintaining spatial consistency while constantly jumping around temporally. We’re grounded in a place, but not a time. The cuts (there are 38 in total) are dramatic in some senses and seamless in others.

When it begins, it’s clear the car has seen better days: it’s full of trash and a tree protrudes through the sunroof and windows. This thing ain’t going anywhere. A young woman dressed in trendy clothes and short shorts climbs inside, spots a tape recorder on the back seat and presses play, triggering the first cut. We go back in time and the woman is now a toddler asleep in the back, with her father in the front nursing a guitar on his lap. He starts playing it (while driving, tsk tsk!) and singing the aforementioned song. The passenger seat is our front row to the drama, which regularly jumps forward in time.

We get a wide perspective on the characters’ lives, with moments spanning happiness and joy to melancholia and longing. At one point the girl is a toddler dancing on the back seat while dad plays and sings; in another, she catches a firefly through the sunroof; in another she’s older, and we see her outside through the car’s windows, accompanying her father as he stands next to it busking. When the girl’s a teenager the dynamic between them changes: she frowns and turns down the volume of the car stereo; she sits in the backseat listening to headphones and ignoring him; she sulks after they have an argument. There’s Cats in the Cradle vibes, but it’s beautiful—not sad or tragic. 

Presenting the vehicle as the stage for the drama never feels forced. Pearl got me contemplating the significant experiences many of us have when we’re on the road: if the family car could talk, it might tell us interesting things about ourselves.

Space is everything in VR, and this is a great use of it. You wouldn’t want this kind of experience to stretch on for too long, but at less than six minutes Pearl doesn’t outstay its welcome; in fact it’s one of my favourite 360 videos to date. It’s rare for the rigidity of the virtual camera—and our lack of ability to explore—to be a virtue, but it is here. In this experience, we’re happy to be simply a spectator; we want to look in and out of the vehicle rather than drive it.