Hidden Flick: It’s Only A Model

But first, since I’d hate to sound like I am writing anything remotely traditional, let’s look at some random animation that is hidden within the realm of the Big Picture, shall we? The Mystery of the Lost Spider Pit Sequence is a short feature in the box set of the 1933 original version of King Kong. Basically, Peter Jackson, fresh off the triumph of the Lord of the Rings films, decided to revisit a favorite childhood movie, and remade Kong. He also had a chance to remake a lost sequence that was not in the original. And so the resourceful chap recreated the famous spider pit sequence, and filmed it in the style of the ’33 version, complete with cheesy special effects, and stop motion animation. It is amazing how close Jackson got to the spirit of the old and creepy vibe without sacrificing the original intentions of the equally talented visionary, Merian C. Cooper.

Elsewhere, of course, there is the Lego Edition of The Knights of the Round Table. Yes, this week’s edition is titled after the opening of that sequence in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where Graham Chapman, as King Arthur, raves about seeing Camelot, and Terry Gilliam, as his trusty servant, Patsy, quips, “It’s only a model.” In the two-disc set, there is a 97-second Lego recreation of that scene, complete with the soundtrack, and if children are nearby, they will want you to replay the sequence 50 times so be forewarned.

Then, of course, we have two animated television series, both from different eras. First, there is Peter Chung’s groundbreaking Aeon Flux, made in the early 1990s, which he masterminded for MTV’s Liquid Television program. Second, we have Gilgamesh, a dark gothic anime set in the near future, and released at the dawn of the 21st century. The former was a minimalist mindbender when it hit MTV, and often, I feel that Chung’s season 2, 5 three-to-five-minute episodes, without dialogue, were his most lean, perfected work. Yes, Flux dies in every installment, but it makes the action appear almost like a recurring nightmare, or dream, depending upon which side of the cosmic bed you dwell.

The latter, I mention because of its incredibly morose subject matter, and ability to hover in the deepest regions of one’s soul without appearing evil, sinister, or misguided. Gilgamesh was a true original series, and the third episode of the opening season, titled Children of a Lesser God, isn’t its masterpiece, but it does have the hidden qualities I enjoyed about the series—the twisted artistic choices, the large post-apocalyptic issues studied in thoughtful repose, and the long passages of dialogue-free character studies.

And all of that animated random history brings us to Magnetic Rose, the lead-off film in the Memories compilation, and this week’s Hidden Flick. Set in 2092, two men aboard a deep space freighter respond to an abandoned space station’s distress signal. Only, it is not devoid of life, as one expects, and exists in some sort of metaphysical region bereft of the normal laws of time and space, offering hallucinatory holographic histories which impact and intertwine an elusive AI and Future Man. And oh yeah, the station scenes feature absolutely stunning sequences of operatic grandeur that leave one awestruck and spellbound. Literally. A floating diva, appearing to be from a distant past, is actually an opera singer delivering her lyrical tale to those who come to visit; music weds with pathos, and the hidden thoughts of ‘when are we?’ aren’t as tantalizing as ‘who are we?’.

Magnetic Rose is vastly different from Katsuhiro Otomo’s other manga stories and the legendary Akira film. Indeed, Rose is actually more of an Otomo story that was developed and enhanced by its director, Koji Morimuto. In the ‘making of’ featurette, Morimoto actually stated that he needed to escape from the ‘Otomo’ influence in order to flesh out his own version of the story—to deOtomo, in a way, a piece of anime so that it could breathe on its own. And yet, even though Otomo had great creative and commercial success with so many manga stories, and the Akira monolithic totem, it is interesting that Morimuto found an angle that was not always present in the Otomo world. Koji Morimuto made a brief work of art—Magnetic Rose clocks in at less than an hour—by combining all of the elements of animation up to that time, and conjuring the poetic grace of storytelling, with a fair dose of the Otomo mystique, all while cast in the drapery of the rich bombast of opera, to tell a genuinely unique story for the ages.

In a way, these techniques parallel the process of Frank Oz and his work with Yoda as the original puppetmaster within the grand arc of George Lucas’s Star Wars Universe. Oz knew that he needed to do something different with the Jedi Master, capturing the essence of a mystical wizard in the frame of a fat and floppy-eared dwarf, but do it in a way which provides wisdom, instead of laughter, and Oz nailed it. So, too, did Morimuto—directing the incomparable Magnetic Rose based on a template from the complex mind of Katsuhiro Otomo, and raising the animation bar even higher.

Randy Ray

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