(Note: In an animated short that precedes the feature, we see Scrat (a saber - toothed squirrel, cracking a
mountain in half and then falling into the crater caused by the crack; Scrat claws at the
sides of the pit as it falls
until it catches hold and briefly explodes into flames.
Alÿs confronts issues
of globalism through Sisyphean episodes: pushing a block
of ice down the streets
of Mexico City
until it is melted completely (Sometimes Making Something Leads to Nothing, 1997); walking the streets
of São Paulo and Jerusalem with a dripping can
of paint to mark national borders (The Green Line (Sometimes doing something poetic can become political and sometimes doing something political can become poetic), 2005); and shoveling a mound
of sand from one
side of a dune to the other in Lima, Peru (When Faith Moves
Mountains, 2002).