Turkish delight II

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3 December (completed 7 December)

This is the second part of a review of Box of Delights, a collection of short animated films, as shown at Bath Film Festival 2013 (@BathFilm) and thanks to a complimentary ticket from the festival


The first part of this review is here (the first five films out of nine)



Inukshuk (2008)

It should not be imagined that curating a programme such as this is any more straightforward than deciding which poems should go in a collection, and in which order, or programming a concert, but I suspect that this film was not best placed here, after the vibrancy of Nicolas et Guillemette (the last film reviewed here). Kimberley Ballard's account of it makes it sound as though it should, nevertheless, have made an impact, but the impact on an adult watching Box of Delights is almost bound to be different from that of a youngster :

On an enchanted block of ice in the Polar region, an Inuk man and a naughty polar bear watch their world transform as they peer into the dark sea. One of the greatest shorts of recent years, Camille-Elvis Thery conjures his landscape in frost-tinged black and white, and blankets the sublime tale in a string of dreamlike images.


Reading this again afterwards, and at a distance, I have the feeling that I should have been amazed by Inukshuk - one can ponder, with Wikipedia's help, on the meaning of the title (maybe the polar bear, or the whale, was the Inukshuk ?) - but I know that I was not, partly because it did not bear comparison with the world created by the previous film. Partly, though, because of the sketchy nature of the animation, where the sun is just a big circle with lines around the edge, and the bear laughing at the man's stupidity just felt like Entre Deux Miettes. Even the surprise at the end of the true nature of the surface on which they were felt like too little, too late, though for some it might have been transformational.


Rabbit Rabbit (2006)

This is a short (two-minute), quick film of moving images following each other in a mirror, punctuated by three duels (the last with unexpected results, which made me think of bullet-time and The Matrix (1999)) - it is Rabbit Rabbit, because the starting-point for a series of replications and reflections is a stylized rabbit and its mirror-image, which, at times (and probably not just incidentally), resemble a Rorschach test.

Kimberley Ballard is spot on to say that 'its kaleidoscopic cast of rabbits will leave you reeling', which is because it is not just a matter of multiplication, but deft movement, too. A film that works on many layers, suggesting the human population explosion (somehow, rabbits are known for their fecundity), opposing forces, and a world beyond the superficial. Nearly halfway through, the polarity changes, and all is made new again in this charming work with its slurping soundtrack, a little like someone in slippers dragging his or her heels...


Lifeline (2009)

To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.


These words by William Blake, which were only published posthumously, do not sum up this film of morphing shapes and creatures, but they are the sort of inspiration for the daughter whom we are shown to try to share a perspective with her father : the title is clearly not meant to be overlooked, with its implication that this is not a casual slideshow of the natural world, but a crucial attempt.

The father does not look as though he can take in beauty, and he appears deeply depressed (or at least to have cares, burdens and woes). In Samuel Beckettt's play Endgame, there is a mention of someone who can only see ashes, and these lines*, too, could have been written for the grey man whom we see. The lively, flowing worlds of  cosmic colours that she brings before him seem like encapsulations of creation in all its dimensions, resembling icons, mandalas and illuminated manuscripts all at once. Somehow, we feel that the father cannot fail to respond**.


Flatworld (1997)

One cannot help being reminded a little of Pratchett's Discworld by the title, though Flatland is a hundred years its senior, but none of this helps as an approach to this piece.

In a film of 28 minutes' duration, Daniel Greaves (who directed Rabbit Rabbit - please see above) has produced something as long as the first five in Box of Delights put together, so it necessarily has a different dynamic and build from the other items screened. It allows us not to understand everything all at once, such as what is being done to the road to repair it, and Greaves wisely does not stick so rigidly to things being two-dimensional that everything is flat.

What he does neatly predict, though, is the flat-screen t.v., which I was getting confused with the fish-tank (because both are hanging on the wall). Just when I was getting excited about the idea that a fish-tank could double as a t.v., that is what Greaves gives me, in a world where a remote-control can change reality :

In the same year as this film, director Michael Haneke talks about the moment at Cannes when the audience applauded when one of the two youthful torturers had been killed - until the other picks up such a device and rewinds what seemed to be normal, live action to remedy the mistake that led to the death of his accomplice. Maybe just coincidence ?

In any case, when the man, his cat and his fish can all enter a colourful world in three dimensions***, courtesy of the t.v. channels, suddenly their world is thrown into relief, the real adventure (rather than the rivalry between the pets) in under way, begins, and the energy is infectious. The other work had drive, and it informs this one, with clever twists and turns, as the man battles to clear his name when mistaken for a burglar, with more than the bag of money at stake. Very entertaining and imaginative !


End-notes

* 'I used to go and see him, in the asylum. I'd take him by the hand and drag him to the window. Look ! There ! All that rising corn ! And there ! Look ! The sails of the herring fleet ! All that loveliness ! (Pause.) He'd snatch away his hand and go back into his corner. Appalled. All he had seen was ashes. (Pause.) He alone had been spared.'

** Unless this should be an elaborate metaphor for the supposed wonders of ECT.

*** The less literal suggestion may be that the two-dimensional world imprisons life in a somewhat uninspiring way, because there is not the will and desire to break out of it into one of possibility, potential and freedom. Hints of Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985) ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)