Top Ten Animated Films That Screw With Your Head – part 2

... suddenly, the animator suffered a fatal heart attack!

Okay, yesterday I unveiled the first five of my top ten cartoons that expand your mind.  That'll be here, then.  All of them, it turns out, are of European origin.  But, as we move into the top five, we become a bit more Ameri-centric so, without further ado:

5: Heavy Metal (1981)

Our first non-European film, Heavy Metal is actually Canadian, however the magazine from which it takes its name is an English-language reprint of Metal Hurlant which is, of course, French.  Like the magazine, the film is a portmanteau of short-stories, linked by the mysterious and all-powerful artefact, the Loc-Nar.  All of the stories are animated in different styles by different teams and with different writers and directors.  The stories are based on the visual styles of, among others, Richard Corben, Bernie Wrightson and Moebius.

Inevitably, this makes the film a bit patchy, with stories ranging from the tedious (Harry Canyon) to the risible (Den) to the delightful (Captain Sternn), the chilling (B-17)  and the epic (Taarna … which was parodied so perfectly by South Park in its 2008 episode ‘Major Boobage’).  

... suddenly, Kenny suffered a fatal heart attack!

 It was an attempt to release an adult animation – the first since Ralph Bakshi’s films of the early 70s, but its drooling T&A content meant that the result, whilst adult, was certainly not mature.  The over-all feeling  is of a self-indulgent, hallucinatory, sensory overload which is, I imagine, exactly what the makers were aiming at! 

It is, however, a good opportunity to hear some great, unrepentant 1970s rock music (my personal favourite being the spine-tingling Veteran of the Psychic Wars by Blue Öyster Cult and Michael Moorcock).  It’s also a good opportunity to see some animated sex and violence – not unusual now, but surprisingly controversial at the time.

4: Wizards (1977)

At last, a full-on, out-and-out all-American movie, albeit from the American underground.  Ralph Bakshi had carved out quite a reputation for himself in the '70s as the first (and only) American animator making feature-length animations for adults.  Fritz The Cat (1972 - based on Robert Crumb’s seditious comic of the same name) became notorious for its starkly honest depictions of sex and drug use, which were commonly depicted in live-action films of the time without critical comment but, of course, Fritz was a cute cartoon character.  Bakshi would promptly go on to the vastly ambitious and deeply flawed adaptation of Lord of the Rings but, before that, we have Wizards, which is his masterpiece.  

Set in a future so distant it looks like the past (sounds oddly like another film Fox released in ’77), Bakshi employs the already well-used tropes of the fantasy genre, mixed in with science fiction and some late-seventies political cynicism.

It contrasts the jagged, intimidating graphics of Ian Miller with the cute, softness of comic-book artist Mike Ploog.  The mish-mash of magic and modern weaponry led the way, to a certain extent, to subsequent developments in the use of science fiction ideas in film.  When the budget ran out, Bakshi resorted to rotoscoping found footage for the massive battle sequences, a technique he repeated in Lord of the Rings.  I have to say it works far better here!

 

3: A Scanner Darkly (2006)

just 'cos you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you

 Like The Adjustment Bureau, this is based on a Philip K. Dick story (to which, unlike The Adjustment Bureau, it sticks like glue) and, like Rango, is produced through an advanced variation of rotoscoping, which director Richard Linklater developed for the earlier Waking Life (2001).

The unreal imagery feeds into the narrative which concerns the paranoia of drug-addled losers, suggesting that they, in their narcotic-infused state, see the world very much like this.  Like many Dick stories, this deals with questions of identity and of what is real, what is hallucination and whether you can definitively tell the one from the other.

2: Comet Quest – The Adventures of Mark Twain (1985)

This film is pure magic.  It tells the story of Mark Twain, who has built himself an extraordinary airship so that he can go and meet Halley’s Comet (he was born on the day it last visited, 75 years earlier) and takes three of his fictional creations with him, Tom Sawyer, Huck Finn and Becky Thatcher.  The ship has an ‘indexivator’ on board, which takes the children into re-enactments of several key Twain works.

The film is directed by Will Vinton and employs his trademark ‘Claymation’ technique, which is far more detailed than Aardman’s similar Wallace and Gromit animation.

The unrestrained imagination of the visualisations of Twain’s stories, combined with the extraordinary detail Vinton’s animators achieve in this entirely hand-animated movie, makes this an undiscovered treasure.  Still unavailable on DVD in the UK, the only footage from it I could find to show you is this dark and disturbing sequence which seems to have been posted as some form of protest.  Watch it and remember what the armadillo said: “It’s a metaphor”. 

1: Akira (1988)

 There are many anime out there which can turn your brain to jelly but, for me, the best by far, is still the first I ever saw.

Imagine the scene:  It’s 1990, a midnight screening, we had gathered to watch a fuzzy NTSC video projected onto a conference room wall.  No one in the country had, till that time, seen these strange Japanese cartoons, save the Marine Boy and Battle of the Planets bastardisations that had polluted our Saturday mornings. 

Akira was unveiled before our disbelieving eyes.  There were no subtitles, no way of knowing what the hell was going on, but the imagery was life-changing.  I’ve spoken to people who claimed to have dropped acid to watch 2001 in the sixties.  Well, minus the acid, this was my 2001.  Deprived of sleep and bombarded by wonderfully incomprehensible images, this movie truly was a trip.  I’ll never stop thanking Helen for pressing play that day.

This, for me, is the number-one mind-fuck animation out there!

And, before you ask why I have ignored Yellow Submarine (1968), it’s simply because I really don’t like it.  I find it almost unwatchable.  It just bombards you with psychedelic, surreal and non-sequiturial imagery from beginning to end.  I have to watch it in bits, its far-too rich a brew for me to take all in one go.  In that sense it served as something of a template for the pop video industry that came along about 15 years later and which still, to this day, machine-guns its viewers with images deprived of coherent meaning.  So, I appreciate Yellow Submarine, but I don’t like it … And this is my list and it is done!  Wow … I think I need to lie down now.

While I do that, feel free to lambast me about the films I’ve missed; those animations which have a special place in your heart and which I have unforgivably slighted by omitting them.

THE ADJUSTMENT BUREAU

I sometimes think that the only SF books that get read in Hollywood are written by Philip K. Dick.  He certainly seems to be the only SF writer who has a decent number of his works made into films.  Although, as Charlie Jane Anders points out in this excellent piece, there are a few likely candidates of his still to see the silver screen.

As for the vast panoply of other authors from the so-called Golden Age, you can’t tell me that America wouldn’t embrace movie versions of Heinlein’s books to its gun-toting, Bible-thumping bosom?  Some of his Young Adult (as they would now be called) books are the finest in the field – and would be guaranteed that all-important popcorn-shifting 12A (or PG13).

The case can, and often has, been made that short stories make better movies than full novels.  Well, if that’s so, why don’t we get more Harlan Ellison?  He’s written one or two stories in his time!  Ray Bradbury?  Every work is a poetic masterpiece!  I’m not saying that these other authors don’t get their work made, of course they do … But they don’t seem to get as many big budget, big name movies as Dick does.  I’m also not saying his work doesn’t deserve greater recognition, it certainly does.  But so do many other authors.

Anyway, The Adjustment Bureau is, in case you hadn’t already guessed, based on a Dick short story.  It’s called Adjustment Team from 1954 and you can read a facsimile of its original magazine appearance here

If you do trouble to read it, you will doubtless not be surprised by the differences twixt written text and filmed adaptation.  The main character’s name and status have changed, his talking dog sidekick has been replaced by a kindly black man in a hat (make of that what you will) and the story is, suddenly, a love story.

In Gary Westfahl’s annoyingly excellent review of the film, which you can read here, he suggests that this is because of Hollywood’s very own Adjustment Bureau; the people who ensure that every major film (and, be under no misapprehension, the presence of Matt Damon in the lead role makes this a major film) is carefully altered and manipulated to make sure that it conforms to what The All-Powerful Studios believe their audiences want.  It is very rare that a big, expensive Hollywood film stretches an audiences expectations (Rango is an interesting exception I’ll come to in a later blog entry) but, on the other hand, it is rare that a story by Dick fails to stretch your expectations.

But ah, there’s the rub, the friction that exists between director Nolfi’s dreams of being dangerous and challenging, given pause by the Studios’ need to be friendly and familiar.  It must also be said that the film’s marketing really hasn’t helped.  The TV adverts deliberately make The Adjustment Bureau look like an action/chase movie when, in fact, it’s a fantasy/ romance (I’m sorry, purists, there’s no hint of science in this fiction now). 

See?  Then there’s the, frankly, appalling poster which, at least in the UK, proudly sports Total Film’s doubtless, entirely spontaneous blurb proclaiming the film ‘Bourne Meets Inception’  which, of course, the marketing people felt compelled to use in all the UK advertising.  

thanks to i-flicks.net for finding the source of that rather unhelpful blurb

Bourne Meets Inception.  Really?  Does Matt Damon’s character kill loads of people?  No.  Is he fighting a one-man battle against a ruthless, faceless power that will stop at nothing to kill him?  No, they want to help him.  Does his girl-friend get killed?  Nope.  Okay, so, Inception … Is the plot ferociously complex?  Not really, you do need to pay attention, though.  Is it a redemption story?  Oddly, for a Hollywood movie, no.  Does it switch between levels of reality?  Ah, well, sort of, yes.  Right, so, like Inception, it’s quite clever and plays around with reality, but the only similarity it has with Bourne is Matt Damon and, I imagine, he would be quite insulted if people really expected him to play every role like Jason Bourne.

The dismal poster, which doesn't look at all like Matt Damon's head Photoshopped onto a stock shot.

See, this is a much better poster (albeit derivative of The Social Network's), it's moody and classy and more likely to appeal to the adults who would actually enjoy this film.

Alright, so, enough about what the film isn’t … What is it?  It is certainly an engaging attempt to tell a very traditional story in a non-contemporary way.  I imagine, in an alternate universe, Frank Capra could have made almost exactly this same film in the 1940s.  At least the hats that The Adjusters wear would have been in period and not as anachronistic as they here appear.

The film begins with an unlikely protagonist, since Matt Damon is a politician called David Norris.  Is it possible to be sympathetic towards a politician?  Ah, but it’s okay, Norris’ first act is to lose his election; so he’s a rubbish politician.  That’s alright, then.

On election night he meets Elise (played by a radiant Emily Blunt) and falls instantly head over heels.  She inspires him to start telling the truth in his concession speech and that, then, is the key moment in his life.  Four men in hats watch this unfold with a sense of a job well done.  They have ensured the future.  All that needs to happen now is that they ensure David and Elise never meet again.  Well, there wouldn’t be much of a movie if they succeeded, now would there?

The film has a soft heart.  It tells us that the right kiss from the right person at the right moment can change your life.  Which it can.  We humans are fairly simple beings and once an idea – such as true love – embeds in our heads, there’s really no shifting it.  Damon and Blunt are magical together, there being a real and natural chemistry between which means we also genuinely believe in their love and that Damon will defy the universe for her.  This is proper, traditional romance, not post-modern pastiche or comedic parody, and the film is all the better for it.

"See, in the story there's a talking dog.  I told you!"

 But The Adjustment Bureau also has a soft head. It is implied that these characters who oversee us and influence us are Angels and The Plan is written by God, with the best interests of everyone written into it.  That is a stupendously simplified view of Fate and Destiny which, I suppose, I could go along with, if these Angels actually understood the people they are overseeing.  But they don’t.  They can’t, otherwise they’d know that putting obstructions in the way of David and Elise’s relationship is only going to make its consummation all the more inevitable.  We’re simple creatures, but we’re also stubborn!

The Men In Hats are a lovely, simple idea.  They have a sort of diplomatic immunity to the laws of physics and can turn any door into a door to someone else.  That was a nice idea when Pixar used it in Monsters Inc (2001) and it bears expansion and development here. These are people with awesome supernatural powers but who are bound by bureaucratic red tape and hierarchy, just like you and me (without the supernatural powers, in your case). 

As such, the frustration felt particularly by Case Manager, Richards (played delightfully by John Slattery) is palpable.  He has to ensure everyone sticks to The Plan but it is above his pay grade to know why.  He’s strictly Middle Management and, when his repeated attempts to keep Norris on-plan fail, he has to call in Senior Management, in the form of Thompson (Terence Stamp, giving one of those killer cameos he specialises in these days).

When the film reaches its inevitable conclusion after, I must say, rambling around for a good reel more than it needs to, I, for one, was left with a few questions about the credibility of what I’d seen (and, yes, credibility is essential even in a fantasy … I’d say especially in a fantasy) and about whether surrendering one’s free will to an omnipotent benign organisation would really be such a bad thing.  It also left me with a niggling suspicion that I maybe shouldn’t trust people in hats.

Another Dick adaptation that features a hat, as well as romance against which the forces of evil conspire, and which also happens to be the finest movie ever made, is Blade Runner (1982).  If you haven’t seen the Blu-Ray edition, I encourage you to rectify that immediately.  You can thank me later.

Meanwhile – whether you wear a hat or not - if you have any thoughts on traditional (or even brand new) SF authors who don’t get enough screen time – that’s what the comments section is all about.  Have your say!

Dir: George Nolfi

Stars: Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, John Slattery, Terence Stamp

Dur: 106 mins

Cert:12A