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FANTASIA 2024: APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ANIMALIA PARADOXA (2024)

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Weirdest!

DIRECTED BY: Niles Atallah

FEATURING: Andrea Gomez

PLOT: In a world of little water and plenty of debris, a creature wishes to find refuge in the sea.

Still from Animalia Paradoxica (2024)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: For a couple of reasons, Atallah’s film brings to mind Begotten; for other reasons, it brings to mind Hotel Poseidon. For these reasons, Animalia Paradoxa is easy to describe as “weird.”

COMMENTS: There were a number of walkouts, there was an immediate rush by others when the credits clicked onto the screen, and a pair of young women sitting behind me were disappointed at the paucity of stop-motion animation. Their criticism was somewhat sound, as there is little of that element in the film; however, it is a credit to them that they remained to witness the entirety of Animalia Paradoxa as it languidly built its world and approached its bizarre climax and whisperingly uplifting denouement.

The experience begins with a shabby red curtain, drawn back by a marionette hand, revealing a reel-to-reel film viewer behind the crimson barrier. The hand cranks a lever and documentary footage of oceans, life, destruction, and more unspools, and eventually we meet our unnamed, and understandably mute, protagonist. She is covered head to foot in shabby, skin-tight habiliment, with only her milky eyes visible. Her exploration of the near-empty shell of a building in a wasteland is both skulking and lithe, implying she is not native to this terrain. There are occasional silent onlookers, and intermittently a group of cultists pass through the courtyard, spouting messianic fervor and hate.

Andrea Gomez, who performs the main character, captures its gentle soul through movement. She artfully and desperately crafts tchotchkes to offer up to a hand which emerges from a crack in a wall. She needs water for comfort, perhaps to live, and the gummi worms proffered by this hand, when fed to a mutterer suspended in a web of her own hair, releases water down her matted locks. The xylophonic sound cues and other chime and thump-based music underscores the unreality of this mythic exercise. Dialogue, though little is to be found, always grates, whether it be the megaphone-distorted tirades from the patrolling zealots, or the sinister coughs and utterances from a bloated basement-dwelling creature whose face is obscured by a suspended cellophane sheet done up in makeup.

This film oozes over you, which by and large is a satisfying, if not always pleasant, experience. The trash world Atallah assembles (alongside the collective Diluvio, which also includes the pair Joaquin Cociña and Cristóbal Leon) is ugly and beautiful—and I hate phrases like that. The title, were I to guess, refers to us. Humans. Dry-land entities, yearning for water. But shortly after the screening, I decided not to think too much on this film. Its themes are clear, even as its execution is obtuse. The cryptic dream of Animalia Paradoxa is better handled indirectly, lest the clumsy fingers of reason shatter its eerie presence.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“In certain theatrical moments, it feels like silent cinema, yet it is also strikingly contemporary in its concerns and approach to genre. As some of the best films are, it is difficult to categorize. This elusiveness plays to the film’s strengths.”–Alex Brannan, CineFiles Movie Reviews (Fantasia Screening)

Capsules

CAPSULE: THE GRASS LABYRINTH (1979)

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Kusa-meikyû

DIRECTED BY: Shuji Terayama

FEATURING: Hiroshi Mikami, Takeshi Wakamatsu, Keiko Niitaka

PLOT: A youth embarks on a quest through his unconscious to uncover a tune that his mother used to sing for him as a child.

Still from The Grass Labyrinth (1979)

COMMENTS: Shuji Terayama, emperor of Japan’s post-war avant-garde scene, made a name for himself mainly through experimental plays and films such as Death in the Country, The Fruits of Passion (starring ), and the controversial Emperor Tomato Ketchup. Grass Labyrinth is a 40 minute work that extravagantly exhibits the author’s tendencies and style while also assuming a relatively restrained approach.

The premise of an investigation into the labyrinth of memory allows for an exercise in oneiric and experimental filmmaking free from the solidity of conventional narrative. Images float in and out of the screen in a liquid stream of consciousness, like half-remembered memories (the other half filled by reconstructions, dreams and hallucinations) in a state of hypnagogia. Recurring motifs and ideas form a subliminal thread that never assumes the form of a clear and rational plot: mother figure, appearing in an Oedipal context (already suggested by the film’s premise); open fields; the ocean; and, of course, the melody of the song that our protagonist so desperately seeks, the picture’s main leitmotif.

The search for a lost childhood item (with all its psychological implications) provides the film’s central point of focus, the axis around which all the apparitions dance. The immersion in the confusing (and occasionally terrifying) sea of childhood memories summons a cast of disquieting sights and sounds, specters of all sorts that haunt the boy’s psychic depths. The mother, who at times seems to be conflated with the song itself, is the most prominent vision, but we can’t ignore the contribution of the unnamed woman who inspires contradictory attitudes of attraction and repulsion in the main character, or a troupe of demonic figures that burst into the film in a loud and ritualistic spectacle typical of Terayama’s style.

Grass Labyrinth succeeds in replicating the aura of a striking but badly remembered dream, or a trip down unconscious lane. Like other works by Terayama, it subverts the conventional trappings of cinema in order to provide an experience that couldn’t be communicated otherwise. Standing in between the author’s more experimental short-films and his (relatively) more accessible full-length outings, it works well as an introduction to the overlooked auteur.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“…a surreal trip of a short film…. It doesn’t take long for Akira’s journey to fall down a rabbit hole of weirdness and the movie quite literally ends in a madhouse.”–Trevor Wells, Geeks

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CAPSULE: OZMA (2023)

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DIRECTED BY: Keith John Adams

FEATURING: Ferdy Roberts, Victoria Moseley, Jun Noh, Gemma Saunders, Alice Margaroli, voice of Éva Magyar

PLOT: An insomniac widower spends the night toting around an on-the-run telepathic jellyfish creature.

Still from Ozma (2023)

COMMENTS: Jeff attributes his only slightly startled reaction to finding telepathic jellyfish Ozma abandoned in his garden to having been “well rehearsed” to accept strangeness through a lifetime of dreaming. If this film had been merely about that telepathic blob with the blinking lights and nothing else, he would have needed less rehearsal. But Ozma is entirely built on dream logic. There’s the pair of squabbling pursuers disguised as cops who use vegetables as truncheons. A woman who illustrates the story of the journey of Cleopatra’s Needle from Alexandria to London through very crude cutout animation. Rifles whose bullets have effects far from what we expect. And that’s not to mention the tiny touches, like Jeff’s unusually large bed.

And there’s one more weird thing. When Jeff begins his opening narration, he’s lying in bed, complaining of insomnia. A walking bass line accompanies his fretting, soon joined by the complaints of a muted trombone. It’s an effective accompaniment, but more noteworthy is the fact that we can see the bassist and trombonist, apparently vamping right there in Jeff’s bedroom as he tosses and turns. Throughout the movie, musicians show up in the frame with the characters, never acknowledged. The use of musicians onscreen—playing nondiegetic accompaniment, yet visible, like materialized ghosts—is unique. It’s a simple idea, but I can’t recall any movie that uses this technique in exactly this way, and none that’s so dedicated to the concept. And it’s a great idea, because the sounds here are outstanding—ranging from multiple jazz combos to a tabla, a dulcimer, and even more exotic instruments like the Ethiopian krar (harp) and the Japanese shakuhachi (bamboo flute).

It’s all pleasantly eccentric, which is much of the appeal. Ozma does, however, also explore a serious topic: the widower’s pathological, insomnia-inducing grief, which has mellowed from traumatic sadness into a permanent personality feature. Jeff’s entire story, frequently told in voiceover, is addressed to his absent wife. His journey to take the telepathic jellyfish to its appointed rendezvous reflects his adoption of a healthier relationship to his memories. Ozma is modest in means—in its household props and London public street locations, in Ferdy Roberts’s calm portrayal of Jeff, in its reliance on monochrome —but ambitious in its ideas. Ozma is musical, original and inventive: it’s not just the same old tired story about an insomniac toting a telepathic jellyfish around London.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“… a surreal mission… all at once city symphony, Egyptological noir, oneiric odyssey and heady tale of psychic healing,”–Anton Bitel, SciFiNow (festival screening)

Ozma [DVD]

Ozma [DVD]
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APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (1967)

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Recommended

DIRECTED BY: Frantisek Vlácil

FEATURING: Frantisek Velecký, Magda Vásáryová, Ivan Palúch, Josef Kemr, Michal Kozuch, Pavla Polaskova

PLOT: In the early Middle Ages, a pair of brothers rob a caravan under protection of the King, setting off a chain of events that eventually leads to the kidnapping of Marketa, a virgin pledged to the convent.

Still from Marketa Lazarova (1967)

WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Dreamy pagan sequences adorn a stylized and hallucinatory landscape in Vlácil’s stark medieval epic.

COMMENTS: Although Marketa Lazarová is almost universally praised, everyone remarks on its confusing narrative. The film, which begins with a highway robbery and kidnapping, starts off with a lack of context, and the remainder of the story is fragmented, peppered with abrupt changes of scene, and with dreams, visions, and flashbacks which are sometimes impressionistic, sometimes indistinguishable from reality. The plot elements are comprehensible—a petty noble goes too far and angers the king, a virtuous maiden is snatched from her home—-but the main problem is keeping track of who is who, and where their loyalties lie. If you are prepared for confusion, you can soldier through it and the parties should sort themselves out within an hour or so. But if you would like some guidance, I’ll start this review with a short overview of the major players to get you oriented.

Despite providing the film’s title, Marketa Lazarová herself is not a prominent character until the film’s second half. The story atually centers on her eventual abductor, Mikoláš, a lanky and handsome man in a tight beard. Mikoláš’ brother and partner in banditry, Adam, is easily identified because he has only one arm (although watch out for flashbacks where he has two). Although they behave like highwaymen, Mikoláš and Adam are pseudo-nobles, the sons of Kozlík, a bald and bearded feudal yeoman who rules the walled town of Roháček. Long-haired temptress Alexandra, a brunette contrast to Marketa’s blond innocence, is their sister. In the first chapter the brothers kidnap Kristián, a German youth of noble blood, intending to ransom him. Meanwhile, Lord Lazar rules Obořiště, Roháček’s rival village; he is Marketa’s doting father. Mikoláš spares Lazar after catching him scavenging the wreckage of the caravan the Kozlík clan intends to loot, but later regrets his mercy when Lazar refuses to provide assistance against the king. In revenge, Mikoláš kidnaps the virginal Marketa, whom the (relatively) pious Lazar has pledged to the nunnery. The relentless Captain “Beer,” the king’s military representative in the region, is easily distinguished by his bushy mustache. These are the major players; many minor characters enter and leave, but if you can keep these straight, you should be able to navigate the main thrust of the tale—though details are often elusive.

The narrative confusion matters less because the film is so beautiful. The black and white vistas show off the wintry Bohemian countryside, bare interiors where scar-faced men in furs and chainmail Continue reading APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: MARKETA LAZAROVÁ (1967) →