DVD Review: Animating Reality
This colllection of mini-documentaries prove animation is good for more than Saturday morning cartoons.
By Amanda Hughes
Published: September 10th, 2010 | 11:05am
Animating Reality is hard to pin down. The thirteen award-winning movies in this collection come from eleven different countries, employ dozens of different animation techniques, and have no common theme. The only thing tying these five- to 23-minute short films together is their form: animated documentary. That seems like a bad combination of two good things, like Parmesan cheese on Chinese food, since documentaries show the world as it is, and animation bends reality to fit the creator's vision. But a few films on Animating Reality are beautiful examples of how, when done right, art can convey the truth more poignantly than fact.
Unfortunately, the entries in this collection are inconsistent. Whether a particular film succeeds doesn’t always hinge on the skill of the animator. Like any documentary, these films rely on compelling content. It looks like when you're animating reality, the result is only as interesting as the reality it depicts.
Corrie Francis’s Conversing with Aotearoa (Maori for “New Zealand”) is one of the
strongest films in the collection. The jarring short explores the way Kiwis relate to their diverse and often brutal landscape, using photomontages
and time-lapse photography, the dramatic images heightened by flourishes of
animation, to immerse the viewer in New Zealand’s gorgeous and unpredictable
wilderness. The effect is disorienting but strangely hypnotic. By the end of
the 15-minute film, you can almost smell those wet, green, Hobbit-haunted
forests.
Less visually stunning, but surely more compelling, is Beloved Ones from UK filmmaker Samantha Moore. In this lush, totally animated piece, Moore presents the stories of two African women living with the reality of HIV/AIDS. One, orphaned by AIDS, is head of her household at the tender age of 16. The other is 42 years old and preparing her children for her imminent death. It is remarkable how intimately these two women are depicted—the characters are so well-developed it’s hard to believe the film is only six minutes long.
But not every piece is a gem. One of two entries from The Netherlands, The Last Words of Dutch Schultz is an unbearable 25-minute exercise in nearly mindless abstraction. The problem with this film lies both with the source material and the execution. Filmmaker Gerrik van Dijk gives us a promising premise: In the 1930s, gangster Dutch Schultz was shot and fatally injured. During his last 24 hours, Schultz talked nonstop. The transcript of Schultz’s cryptic ramblings has provided inspiration for many artists, including William S. Burroughs. Unfortunately, this interpretation is burdened with telenovela-overplayed voiceover, painfully obvious cultural references, and a barely-there concept struggling to bring everything together. This movie is as confusing—and boring—as Schultz’s incoherent babble.
On the whole, though, Animated Reality is engrossing. It’s easy to watch the DVD all at once, losing yourself in the stories, each one like a new phase of a fuzzy, disconnected dream. Watching Animated Reality is a worthwhile and often moving experience. Even though not all of the films are created equal, watching them together is a rewarding lesson in a brave and disarmingly quirky form of storytelling.
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ABOUT THE FILM
Animating Reality: A Collection of Short Documentaries
By: Various
A Million Movies A Minute, April 2010
Issue #30
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