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Apocryphally Weird

67*. THE TRAGEDY OF MAN (2011)

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Az ember tragédiája

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“Man’s greatest weakness is his love for life.”—Molière

DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Voices of Mátyás Usztics, Tamás Széles, Tibor Szilágyi, Ágnes Bertalan

PLOT: God creates the universe; Lucifer, the eternal spirit of negation, tells God that Man will inevitably revolt, and is allowed to tempt Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. After the Fall, guided by Lucifer in various guises, Adam watches his descendants slip into tyranny and debauchery in more than a dozen succeeding segments that run from the earliest cavemen to the last humans of the far future. Adam returns from his historical survey feeling suicidal.

Still from the tragedy of man (2011)

BACKGROUND:

  • Based on Imre Madách’s 1861 play “The Tragedy of Man.”
  • The same story was adapted to film in 1984 as The Annunciation, with the story enacted by a cast of children.
  • Although production began in 1988, it took Jankovics 23 years to complete this magnum opus. Since his state-backed financing ended with the fall of Communism in 1989, he animated individual segments one at a time as funding allowed.
  • Because the film took so many years to make, many additional voice actors had to be brought in, although Mátyás Usztics (Lucifer) and Tibor Szilágyi (God) were available for the entire production.

INDELIBLE IMAGE: In a nearly 3-hour animated film where each individual frame is a work of art, it’s a boggling process to try to pick a single image to represent the whole. Forced to pick, we’d have to go with something depicting Lucifer, the key figure driving the drama. The version of him as the red-eyed shadow with translucent wings, reminiscent of  Fantasia‘s Chernabog, works as well as any other.

TWO WEIRD THINGS: The French Revolution was just Johannes Kepler’s dream, Spaceship Adam

WHAT MAKES IT WEIRD: The literary source material might be dry, but Marcell Jankovics uses it as a launching pad for his constantly morphing, psychedelically-colored cosmic animations, transmuting the already complex story into a nearly-three-hour-long fever dream.

Blu-ray trailer for The Tragedy of Man 

COMMENTS: It seems that Marcell Jankovics can make nothing but Continue reading 67*. THE TRAGEDY OF MAN (2011) →

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: INTERFACE (2021)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY:  Justin Tomchuk (AKA )

FEATURING: Voices of Justin Tomchuk, Libby Brien, Christa Elliot

PLOT: A lone man and a pink shape-shifting parasite wander and reminisce in the aftermath of the Philadelphia Experiment.

Still from Interface (2021)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Interface has a dreamy vibe from start to finish, uncanny and uneasy in the vein of ‘s works.

COMMENTS: Interface is not your typical, shallow Adult Swim-style surrealism, even if it may seem like it at first. A melancholy and sense of existential dread infuses every scene. Something uncanny lurks in the movie’s corners, and it isn’t just the monster accompanying our protagonist in his wanderings.

The setting is an alternate version of the aftermath of the Second World War, in which the Philadelphia Experiment had unforeseen consequences. (For those that do not know or remember, the Philadelphia Experiment is an urban legend about a hypothetical U.S. Navy teleportation experiment). Many sci-fi movies— especially B-movies—have been inspired by this story, most notably Stewart Raffill’s The Philadelphia Experiment from 1984.

Interface approaches this narrative more subtly than previous adaptations, recalling a dream and a work of pure surrealism. We follow, for the most part, two survivors of the Philadelphia Experiment, a lonely man unable to grow old and die and the shape-shifting monster that accompanies him everywhere. The lonely man wanders aimlessly, a soul trapped in limbo, while the accompanying parasite uses him as a host for its own survival.

There are clear symbolic undertones. The protagonist represents modern man, trapped in guilt and grief after catastrophic event (WWII). The parasite works as a personification of the negative emotions consuming him. A lyricism underlies the grotesque absurdity of the situation, highlighting the personal and collective trauma.

Memories of the past, as well as scientific attempts to restore that past, are interspersed throughout the movie. The focus, however, remains on our hero and his attempts to move on with his life (or his death). The uncanny, retro digital animation—recalling movies of the 80s and 90s—adds to the uneasiness of his situation. The melancholic soundtrack, composed by the director, does the same.

For the art lovers out there, there are a plethora of visual references to paintings, especially surrealist paintings, like Rene Magritte’ s “The Son of Man” or ‘s entire oeuvre. Even seemingly random abstract shapes in between scenes recall Kandinsky. These Easter eggs showcase Tomchuk’s wide range of influences and rich intellectual background.

“Interface” started as a web series, and it is still available on Youtube in its entirety for free; you can also rent or buy it on VOD for an ad-free experience that puts a little money in the filmmaker’s pocketbook (and even less in ours). Alternatively, you can purchase a Blu-ray or VHS version directly from the director for a more immersive retro experience.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…meditative, philosophical, atmospheric, surreal, imaginative, fantasy-sci-fi animation that brings to mind Mamoru Oshii at his most enigmatic and bizarre with a light sprinkling of Miyazaki.”–Zev Toledano, The Worldwide Celluloid Massacre

List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: HOPITAL BRUT (1999)

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DIRECTED BY: Le Dernier Cri (Pakito Bolino, Marc Druez, Christophe Istier)

FEATURING: None

PLOT: A revue showcasing the grotesque occupants of the world’s most inhospitable hospital.

Still from Hospital Brut (1999)

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: Hopital Brut is an indefatigable assault on the senses, combining a deliberately crude and hyperactive visual style, a clamorous soundtrack that never softens or slows, and a giddy disregard for propriety. The curators aim to offend, and they never let up in their compulsion to shock.

COMMENTS: The digital hive mind at Google Translate interprets “hôpital brut” directly as “raw hospital.” However, “brut” alone lso translates as “gross,” and “Gross Hospital” is a far more appropriate and accurate title for these 45 minutes of cartoon cacophony assembled by the French collective Le Dernier Cri (translation: “The Latest”).

One of the things that makes animation anthologies like Spike and Mike’s Festival of Animation compelling is the broad range of styles and intentions sitting alongside each other. Hopital Brut is based on comic panels created by more than two dozen stars of the alt-comic scene, and their unique artistic approaches seem well-suited to the format, which promises something distinctly strange behind each door. However, the end product suffers from an interminable sameness, with one chaotic onslaught sliding into the next one. The techniques change somewhat, with stop-motion, paper cutouts, and even the occasional burst of sped-up live action footage spotlighted, but they all share a rapid pace, herky-jerky rhythm, and a love of the coarse. With so many sources of artistic inspiration at play here, and considering the assembled film’s intention to be a patchwork quilt of strangeness, maybe it’s not asking too much to expect a little variety. Instead, the same ideas keep popping up to the tune of the relentless hammering of an industrial soundtrack.

Despite its repetitiveness, a few segments have enough novelty to stand out, such as the tale of the lonely artist who turns to a lord of the underworld in order to get girls, but discovers that the over-endowed demon has more to offer. Another patient freaks out when he sees himself drowning in his soup. A set of genitals features anthropomorphized testicles that look like busts of German composers. A giant praying mantis shows up for a quick orgy of rape and evisceration, which makes for a change of pace from all the poking, prodding, and maiming that the doctors usually employ. But even these moments are only marginally more impactful than their brethren, as the same notions are served over and over again. The chef may change, but the dish remains the same.

There’s little doubt that Hopital Brut is weird. It wears its irreverence and its iconoclasm on its sleeve. But after that, there’s very little to recommend it. The film is a Venn diagram where the categories of “weirdness” and “watchability” are moving steadily apart until they are completely separate circles. It ends as it began, no less defiant and no more engaging than it was from the outset. Still, the collective seems to have landed squarely in the center of its intended target, and there’s an amusing piece of evidence to back that up. If you visit the film’s page at MUBI, you’ll be greeted with a piece of text which is both absurdly tangential and highly apropos: “Hopital Brut is not available to watch. Instead, check out Lars von Trier’s Antichrist.” An even trade? It’s probably a perfect double feature, an algorithmic pairing that would make Le Dernier Cri’s collective hearts flutter.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“Don’t want to fry on acid? Afraid your gonna do a Diane Linklater dive off a skyscraper thinking that you can fly and the only “scraper” you’ll get is when they peel you off the pavement?! Look no further than the semi short ‘Hopital Brut’!!!… keep kids far away from this, unless you want your kids traumatized for their rest of their short, miserable lives.” —noisepuncher_caiaav, Noisepuncher

(This movie was nominated for review by Parker Weston. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)         

Miscellanea

SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: CARTOON CORNER (2026)

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Why, yes I watched thirteen films today…

Wan Wan (dir. Mayuko Kobayashi; 8 min.)—A kaleidoscopic grapeshot blast of vibrantly vague memories. I suspect this font of imagery—trees, water, pigeons, noodle pan, fireworks—flows directly from Mayuko Kobayashi’s memories, but there is a universality. Beginning with home-video of a matriarch, we dive into a series of child-drawings in constant motion. There’s also a cute dog.

Transitional Object (dir. Shayna Strype; 7 min.)—D’aww, that was adorable. Shayna Strype uses stop-motion, traditional, and a combination of the two animations to honor a girl’s stuffed toy as it watches over her through the years, before passing her along to the afterlife. Lo-fi synth keyboarding provides a chirpy, nostalgic soundtrack.

Play Fight! (dir. Katrina Larner; 8 min.)—There are countless gaps in my personal experience, and one reason I’m drawn to animated shorts is in order to fill those gaps. Herein, Katrina Larner explores the vagaries of ‘tween girl sleepovers, and the mental impact of homosexual preferences at that age. A 5th-wheel girl is dropped off for a night of party-playing, and so we observe a cavalcade of cacophonous color and craziness. A giant mother mother shoots a knife and fork from her eyes and pursues what she views as wayward behavior. But!, things wrap up well enough for our pentad of party people, ’cause it’s only a play fight.

blinks in mimi’s singing voice (dir. Natalie Xie; 6 min.)—Is this but an elaborate series of notebook doodles brought to life? Perhaps, but maybe not. I can’t say I understood just what this was or where it was going, but Natalie Xie kept my eyes occupied throughout as the image shifted from clusters of kitty faces to jumping jacks to desks, chairs, and birds. On its one-and-a-half second course across the screen, a green dot kept my rapt attention.

A Flame the Color of Air (dir. Emily Pelstring; 7 min.)—Words, lines, color, and voice all flow and spin across a black backdrop, shifting and never taking full form for long. Pelstring’s study of womanhood focuses on the ineffable, drawing from a medieval Continue reading SLAMDANCE FILM FESTIVAL: CARTOON CORNER (2026) →