Commentary 19 Mar 2009 08:34 am
Gates of Heaven
- Back in 1980, I was an ardent follower of the NY Film Festival. There were great films entering the market. It was tough to get into screenings, but I’d figured out a way and was able to attend whatever I wanted. One of the films I saw that year was a Gates of Heaven by Errol Morris. Morris had been working with Werner Herzog on Strozek. Herzog was my god at the time, so I was particularly interested in seeing Morris’s work and went to see the film and hear a Q&A with him afterwards.
The slow and purposefully timed “documentary” was about a pet cemetary that moved its site from LA to SF and the people that were involved with the pets buried there. During the film there were many groans from the crowd. At least ½ of the audience left mid-screening. It was an odd film, very different in approach from Herzog. As a matter of fact it was very different from any documentary I’d seen before. I loved it.
The first question put to Morris during the post-film Q&A came from a woman up front who said, “I think your film would have been better if had been cut in half.” Morris’s instant response was, “I think you’d be better if YOU were cut in half!” That’s when the festival director and moderator of the program, Richard Roud, put his head on the table in front of him and realized it was going to be one of those sessions.
While watching the film, I was entranced. About 3/4 of the way through it, I started thinking about my medium – animation. Here, in front of me was an “Anti-New Wave” (my label) film.
However, my medium hadn’t gone through anything comparable to the “New Wave” yet – never mind be ready for an “Anti-New Wave”! Oh, despair.
Where was there to go with this? Animation had gone from 19th Century realism to 20th Century art styling, yet it hadn’t grown up in the bigger picture – content.
In the post screening discussion with my companion, I expressed my thoughts and depression. I needed only one reminder to pull me out of it. Tale of Tales.
Something had happened with that film (on the back of the Hubleys and some of the other modern animation filmmakers) to literally push the medium beyond itself.
To this day, I’m not sure anything has gone beyond Norstein to the next step in developing animation to a bigger level. As a matter of fact, I think things have retrogressed. Sure the current films would pass Robert McKee’s story structure tests, but they aren’t rich. CG movement is smoother, but the films aren’t bigger. In a way, we’re back to the Bobby Bumps era … happy about the movement and ignorant of the complexity of storytelling.
I sound so pessimistic when I reread this, but I that’s not how I feel. I think I’m enormously optimistic. I hope and expect someone to surprise me with something that will turn a new corne and thrill me. Animation hasn’t done that for quite some time, but I know it will.
There’ve been lots of exciting pieces that almost make the mark, and I could start naming a long list of films that were enormously encouraging. Schizein and Madame Tutli-Putli were the most recent to excite me. But I’m looking for something that’s at least as good as anything done in live action. (Even that’s not a high threshold, these days.) I’m looking for something that will change the way I think. It’s going to show up soon – maybe, I’ll be the one to do it. In the meantime, I’ll keep looking.
on 19 Mar 2009 at 10:22 am 1.Mike Rauch said …
Gates of Heaven is simply brilliant. Though I can understand some people being impatient with it. It’s not for everyone. But my GOODNESS the characters in that film are incredible!
on 19 Mar 2009 at 1:28 pm 2.Tim Rauch said …
Errol Morris and the Maysles brothers are extremely important filmmakers to me. They are, in many ways, live action filmmakers doing things I’d like to do in animation.
I would also I agree that, in terms of structure, Tale of Tales is unique for both pushing the envelope AND being successful. Still, the world of animated filmmaking I’d like to be a part of is not necessarily an endless pursuit of broken boundaries but rather a community made up of artists with singular and strong perspectives.
One of the best metaphors I’ve heard for the artistic community came from a professor of mine at St. John’s. He talked about the history of one’s medium being like a crowded party inside a large room. You mill about and find your corner, trying to stake out who it is you want to speak to and what you want to say. This seems more appropriate to me than a Tower of Babel-ish pursuit of ever higher heights.
on 19 Mar 2009 at 1:49 pm 3.Dave Levy said …
A fun post to read as I have so many films circling in my head from the last three nights of ASIFA-East jury screenings.
I am curious to see where animation goes in this mainstream animation era where there is much box office success based on so little substance. My hopes for this art form are always firmly pinned in the indie arena, yet it’s sad to see how much artfulness and variety has existed in live action films of the last forty years.
I just watched Woody Allen’s “September” this week for the first time, and I can’t think of one animated feature that could compete with the adultness, honesty, and complexity in the film’s subject and in Gena Rowland’s performance. Animation has a long way to go, indeed.
on 19 Mar 2009 at 4:24 pm 4.Michael said …
Hi Time: Your point is a good one, but I’m not looking for new heights. I’m looking for growth to a medium that has, in my mind, sat dormant (at best) for the past 30 years. Animation has wallowed in cg graphics while they ironed out the technical problems and have done all they can to recreate a photoshop reality. I want to see original content that doesn’t feel like everything else I’ve seen.
As I’ve said there have been flickers of originality, but I can’t remember anything wrenchingly singular in all those years.
Picasso built on Cezanne who built on Pissaro who couldn’t have existed without many many others before him. Adventures of an * was done in 1954; Tale of Tales 1978. It’s time for something new and original. You and Mike are on the right path, so I have more than a little hope.
on 19 Mar 2009 at 6:13 pm 5.Jon said …
People don’t read anymore, they lack a true love for the history of their medium and they never go outside. That’s why most animated AND live action films made these days stink. Everything is a copy of a copy of a copy.
Every new filmmaker and animator wants to be the next Tarantino, Marty Scorsese, Milt Kahl or Glenn Keane, without the work or passion. Instead of reading a book, watching an old film, or looking at a tree, they copy the guy next to them and everything becomes colder and slicker. So it’s a rare event when something new comes along that is unique and leaves an impression.
Picasso, Cezanne and Pissarro built not only upon each other, but on classical foundations and life experience. Andy Warhol could draw a shoe better than anyone.
on 19 Mar 2009 at 8:01 pm 6.German Shible said …
Jon is totally right. It is a type of intellectual incest is it not? People keep it in the same mental gene pool and do not step outside of it.
I have not seen Tale of Tales but I am in the middle of rectifying that right now ;] I look forward to seeing it!
on 20 Mar 2009 at 8:01 am 7.Richard O'Connor said …
I’m not sure I agree with you Michael. “Drawn From Memory” is one of the most remarkable pieces of work from the 90s and exemplary of that “nouvelle vague” in animation you are looking for.
We have the maturation (is that a word?) of Bill Plympton’s feature work, “Sita”, even “A Scanner Darkly” and “Waking Life” (which I screen at the NYFF in a similar situation to your Errol Morris story). These are simply a few recent, high profile, examples of this moment in animated film. What we need is our own “Cahiers du Cinema” to put a name to it.
These films offer what live action can not and are transcendant in profound, moving ways. There are few more emotional or brilliantly played scenes than the “sign painter” story in Fierlinger’s film.
on 20 Mar 2009 at 8:23 am 8.Michael said …
You’re right Richard, we don’t agree. All of the films you’ve mentioned are excellent and have certainly placed posts on the way up the mountain. None of them are undoubtedly at the top (in my opinion.) They haven’t changed the way animators can think about animation content. Paul Fierlinger comes close; perhaps his upcoming feature will be it.
on 20 Mar 2009 at 7:37 pm 9.Jenny said …
One of the very best essays you’ve done. I immediately thought of Art Babbitt, who spoke so often and so passionately on this exact topic-when was animation going to “grow up”? I’ve recalled the various interviews with him numerous times over the years(including the excellent chapter on him in John Canemaker’s R A & Andy book), and reflected that really so little of the landscape has changed as he thought it could/would–30 years later.