A butterfly teaches Michael about a mysterious force called “love,” but thankfully, it’s just a dream.
Tag Archives: Puppetry
IT CAME FROM THE READER-SUGGESTED QUEUE: THE HANDS OF GOD (2003)
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DIRECTED BY: Alyson Levy
PLOT: Participants at the 9th Annual International Festival of Christian Puppetry and Ventriloquism in Kankakee, Illinois explain the role of puppets in their evangelism and their faith.
COMMENTS: I will never forget the jaw-dropping moment some years back when a late evening spin ‘round the dial landed me on public access television just in time for one of the most bizarre sights that had ever flickered across my retinas. It was a green space alien puppet singing in a warbling baritone about the power of Jesus, while random intro-level chroma-key wipes revealed an assortment of inanimate puppets waiting for their turn in the spotlight alongside the barely animate human hosts staring blankly into the distance. I had stumbled upon Mr. Grey Spaceman, one of the stars of the legendary “Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Hour,” a kind of kids’ show for kids who had been raised in a cave and then fed quaaludes before being plopped in front of the TV set. The inexplicable mind behind this entertainment (that ran for over two decades) was David Liebe Hart, who built and operated all the puppets in the show, using the same voice for all of them and singing in unthinkable lugubrious tones. Hart’s was a talent so singular that Tim Heidecker and Eric Wareheim invited him onto their “Awesome Show” to just be himself.
There is nothing quite as weird as Hart’s material in The Hands of God. (There is probably nothing as weird as Hart’s material in the world.) But there’s a spirit that runs through the “Junior Christian Science Bible Lesson Hour” that is present here, an earnestness to spread the word of the Gospel and an innate certainty that the best way to do so is through sub-Henson puppetry. The Lord works in mysterious ways, and this is certainly among the most impenetrable of His mysteries.
Director Levy is part of the PFFR collective, the folks responsible for the outrageous children’s-TV parody “Wonder Showzen” as well as the scripts for the twisted anthology Final Flesh. So it’s natural to assume that her goal is to exploit these guileless rubes for all they’re worth. And that may be, but having arrived at this week-long gathering of devout felt, she clearly realized that nothing she did could be more remarkable than what these performers were willing to do themselves. Aside from pointing the camera at the stage, Levy is careful to let the action speak for itself.
One of the things the action says very loudly is that the message is vastly more important than the medium. The puppeteers are uniformly terrible performers, so dedicated to reminding us that Jesus died for our sins that they never come within a country mile of the rhythm or wit we expect from a comedic sketch. One puppet duo consists of an old man in overalls and a primly dressed little girl, but the characters are irrelevant because they’re only here to trade Christian aphorisms that they already know, echoing the way they themselves are performing for an audience that has already been converted to the Good Word. When there is a message, it’s usually a reminder of the flawed world we all share. One puppet troupe dances in front of signs reading “Oprah No” and “Jesus Yes.” Four puppets wrapped in keffiyehs slam into each other in an orgy of Muppety violence until they are thrust apart by the arrival of a puppet Jesus. Most cringe-inducing is the sweet-looking woman whose hippie-girl puppet Yolanda is just back from Mexico, where she “never knew it would be so poor.” Certainly they mean well, but absolutely no one is concerned how they will come across. The Lord is on their side.
An interesting storyline in The Hands of God is the connection between the puppeteers and their puppets. In interview segments, when the subjects are explaining their understanding of the functionality of faith, the humans frequently turn to seek approval from the very figures they are controlling. The puppets authentically become independent personalities, separate in character but fully aligned in mindset. Perhaps the most insightful moment comes during the closing credits, when the interviewees attempt to answer the question of whether there are puppets in heaven. For the first time in the picture, there is a schism in the dogma, as the absolutists who reject any physical manifestation in the Great Beyond run up against those who are clearly heartbroken at the mere thought of being without their companions for eternity.
The Hands of God is proof that weirdness is in the eye of the beholder, as the behavior of these righteous performers can be interpreted as either wildly psychotic or charmingly quirky. But like their spiritual ancestor David Liebe Hart, no one here is doing a bit. Levy’s short documentary is a fascinating look at a group of people for whom touching the face of God is as easy as talking to the hand.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
OTHER LINKS OF INTEREST:
Depraved Puppetry: Is There Any Good News in Dark Humor? – A perspective from a Christian who’s also a fan of PFFR
(This movie was nominated for review by Brad. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)
APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: ABRUPTIO (2023)
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DIRECTED BY: Evan Marlowe
FEATURING: Voices of James Marsters, Hana Mae Lee, Christopher McDonald, Jordan Peele, Robert Englund, Sid Haig
PLOT: Recovering alcoholic Les Hackels finds himself compelled to follow murderous instructions or a bomb implanted in his neck will detonate.
WHY IT MIGHT JOIN THE APOCRYPHA: Violent twists accumulate to breaking point as the plot lurches toward a supernatural conspiracy, with all its hapless character-victims played by humans-as-puppets.
COMMENTS: There’s societal collapse, a shadowy organization texting orders for murder, ill-conceived genetic experiments, a troupe of levitating aliens with tentacles, and perhaps the creepiest babies ever seen. All told, Les effectively handles these challenges with quiet, almost passive, determination. But that’s not what this movie is about—and what this movie is actually about challenges Les far more than the parade of creepy ultra-violence. Abruptio is about heaping great ladles of intrigue and ickiness, poured over the least proactive protagonist this side of Barry Lyndon.
His calm is broadcast through his medium, for he is a puppet—fortunately, the least creepy of the bunch. Puppetry can hit just about any tonal note from cute to uncanny, and the characters in this film all skew firmly to the latter. They are puppeted human actors, similar to Xhonneux‘s oddities in Marquis. The bodies move like ours, but all the heads and exposed limbs smack of prosthesis. Even the occasional bare breasts are obviously latex facsimiles positioned over the genuine article. This visual choice has its ramifications—the entire film experience is always at least a little “off”—but is something of a blessing when you consider just what we’re seeing.
Les kills off his co-workers with a gas-spewing typewriter case. He massacred an innocent family. And more. He blindly follows orders sent to him from an anonymous contact on his mobile phone, his dispassionate puppet face, and deadpan tone of voice, suggesting a deeply troubled, but deeply tranquil, mind. These acts of carnage and survival are a lot to take in, but there’s a point in the growing grisliness. Why are we enduring this alongside the “hero”? How are these disparate Saw-style acts and executions tied together? What is “Herason”? Why does the digital alarm continue to blink 10:22? And just what does the police chief want him to confess to?
Abruptio smacks a good deal of The Trial, but with ultraviolence. It also brings to mind two films whose titles would give the game away, but I’ll hint that one stars Anthony Hopkins and the other doesn’t. The uncanny journey Les takes has the grinding feel of a video game as he lurches from one nasty imperative to the next, attempting to keep his new ward (a rape survivor who emerges from the background dystopia) calm while dodging encounters with his overbearing mother. The final reveal comes as tragic relief, through procedural electric shock. The ghoulish veneer is stripped off, pieces fall into place, and Les finds himself staring down something a good deal more unpleasant than mayhem, murders, mutants—and the creepiest babies ever seen.
Abruptio is scheduled to screen in Gardena, CA (filmmakers in attendance), Riverside, CA, Kansas City, MO, and scattered independent venues starting this week; in Seattle from Oct. 4-13; and there’s also a one-night screening at a drive-in in Orefiled, PA on Oct. 10. Blu-rays drop Dec. 10, streaming is still to-be-announced, and you can keep up with added dates by continually refreshing the film’s home page or following their Facebook page.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
- Les Hackel hates his life. He works a dead-end job. He discovers a fresh incision behind his neck and his friend says it's bomb.
SATURDAY SHORT: THE TELL-TALE HEART (2008)
Robert Eggers first film (that he was proud of) was this adaptation of Edgar Allan Poe‘s short story. Due to shooting conditions that would endanger an elderly actor, Eggers opted to have a doll play The Old Man.
CAPSULE: DANTE’S INFERNO (2007)
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DIRECTED BY: Sean Meredith
FEATURING: Voices of Dermot Mulroney, James Cromwell
PLOT: A faithful update of Dante’s “Inferno” to modern times, performed with stick puppets, as 35-year-old Dante is led on a tour of Hell to see the ironic punishments inflicted on various species of sinners.
COMMENTS: Written in the 1300s, Dante Alighieri’s Divina Commedia was a comedy in the classical sense: as opposed to tragedy, it had a happy ending (at least for the protagonist, if not for the author’s enemies who get written into eternal punishment). Sean Meredith’s puppet take on Dante is surprisingly faithful to the plot structure of the famous “Inferno” cantos, but he adheres to the modern sense of “comedy”: stuff that makes you laugh. Despite the movie’s literacy, some of the jokes can get pretty lowbrow: told Charon will ferry our travelers across the Styx, contemporary Dante remarks, “I love Styx! Ever hear their ‘Paradise Theater’ album?” Other jokes are more clever: Dante’s city of Dis is now a “planned community.” They even throw in a little “Schoolhouse Rock” style parody (the damned flatterers are housed at a Hellish version of the U.S. Capitol).
The updated time period means that Hell now appears much like Los Angeles (a joke in itself). Modernizing the setting allows the filmmakers to make two kinds of commentaries. On the one hand, they can speculate about new residents who might have taken up quarters in Old Nick’s slums since the original poem text-locked in 1320. Some of the newcomers are obvious: Hitler gets in (along with Ronald Reagan, both condemned for consulting astrologers). So does Condoleezaa Rice (although she’s not named), vacuumed up by Judge Minos for lying about WMDs. The other layer of critique occurs due to the culture clash between ancient medieval morals and post-Enlightenment ethics: Dante naturally wonders why his favorite schoolteacher is condemned to dance to house music for all eternity. And a Muslim cabdriver righteously complains about being condemned as a heretic—and, breaking the fourth wall, about being depicted as a stereotype in a puppet movie.
The production leans hard into the artificiality of its puppet-show presentation (which is a type of adaptation that might actually have been made around Dante’s time). In the very first scene, modern Dante rises from a drunken stupor; no attempt is made to hide the string that pulls the paper figure upright. Throughout, rods and wires and popsicle sticks can be seen pushing and pulling the figures across the crosshatched backgrounds of the world. Dante has an Adam’s apple made from a paper tab that moves independently to show fear. At one point, a puppet is quickly flipped from a calm side to an outraged face to express sudden rage. Then there are the graphically pornographic puppets populating the circle of lust, which must be seen to be believed (Dante certainly would not have approved). The team of puppeteers know all the tricks to this limited art form, but after a while you stop noticing the artifice and simply accept this two-dimensional cardboard landscape as a “real” world. Somehow, the producers attracted recognizable talent for small voice acting roles, including Martha Plimpton as a demonic pimp, Tony Hale as Ovid, and Olivia D’Abo as Beatrice.
The movie is not really that weird—although anyone not familiar with Dante’s original schema might find the concept befuddling—but by taking us on an amusing tour of a newly renovated Hell in a brisk 75 minutes, Dante’s Inferno earns a recommendation for English majors with a sense of humor, both those who love and those who hate The Divine Comedy. Released straight to DVD and never reprinted, Dante’s Inferno is a rare find. If you’re searching for it, beware of purchasing the more abundant Dante’s Inferno: An Animated Epic (2010) by accident.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:
(This movie was nominated for review by Leslie Rae, who called it “amazing and hilarious and totally ridiculous.” Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)