In general I quite enjoyed the film. It was a change of pace for what I am usually expecting and what I enjoy in terms of animation. There were some positives and yes, inevitably, I did have some problems with it. But enjoyable for a boring Friday night nonetheless. I thought I'd do a summarised recap and insert some of my thoughts too just for fun. Not really enough for a well thought out review though.
Below is the trailer (not sure whether official or not) of the film. Most likely you won't have a clue what the hell is going on, but good luck with that haha.
Below is the trailer (not sure whether official or not) of the film. Most likely you won't have a clue what the hell is going on, but good luck with that haha.
I realise my previous posts are way too clunky and long so if you care to read about this obscure film, please jump the cut below!
We are first introduced to this expansive futuristic world of 2074, around six decades from ours. Immediately I notice the distinct art style and I'm impressed by the detailed and beautiful land/cityscapes. Very consistent world and the realistic style rich in depth is appropriate for the film's futuristic theme.
The concept design on the film is great, with a consistent merger of old and new. But then I see this world populated with strange, very boxy and two dimensional people. With similar boxy clothes.
Personally, I don't care for the art style of the people, especially when it contrasts so obviously with the realism of the backgrounds. But I'm not too hung up about it, I mean the Serbian animation industry is understandably smaller than most.
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| casually browsing 3D hologram collection of bold guys futuristic sex dolls |
Anyways, we're introduced to a young woman known as Edit, her blonde car-driving boyfriend and their sex-obsessed bald mate with a futuristic ear implant. Baldie encourages him to take his stress out on some 'plastic' (aka a humanoid sex toy. Classy.) but Blondie reassures him he is more of a romantic. They promptly part ways and Blondie picks up Edit and gives her a ride home.
She appears to have failed her psychology exams, on top of that her robotic pet hedgehog of fourteen years seems to have died so understandably, she's copping a lot of grief right now. They talk small matters, including Edit's job talking to a mathematical autistic guy called Abel. He never replies during their therapy sessions and she remarks that she is often just talking out loud to herself.
I'm wondering where this is all going as Edit goes home, ready to debunk only to be met with the angered concerns of her family over her failed-exam.
Is this some plot driving tension I sense? I guess so because next thing we know Edit is visiting a dealer of futuristic drugs (one looking suspiciously like an asthma inhaler lol) who implants a chip into her arm.
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| for future reference: never assume a microchip implant by a druggie with a gun is a good idea. |
It appears to be some sort of performance enhancing chip that quickens response and memory. During one of his therapy sessions, she tells Abel that she intends to use it to 'cheat' and pass the exam. Her phone rings but just before it does he utters to Edit 'not to answer', his first major communicative break though. The boss continues to use Edit as a tool to get Abel to talk and soon enough we're given the reason why.
Abel is a mathematician who seems to have solved the theory of the entire universe and his existence, but the knowledge has caused him to retreat mentally and become selectively mute. Boss described the formula and the key to solving the world's problems and it is possible to predict the future using the formulas and taking into account the parameters, just as how Abel has done so by predicting Edit's phone call.
Edit must get Abel to speak so that Boss and the Government will learn the 'secret'. To prove this, Boss brings Edit into a room and reveals to her some flashy bobby-ma-thing that is supposed to be the formula they have accumulated so far from Abel's notes prior to this. Edit is somehow triggered and is rendered powerless to whatever she sees (we are not shown the theory clearly at this point) and bursts out into tears upon witnessing some flashing, blinding light.
Of course this is a state secret but she proceeds to tell everyone and their mothers what she saw in an attempt to understand it herself. Edit begins to exhibit strange unexplainable symptoms until one day she's taking a shower and downs some mysterious red pills (I can tell they're iron pills) and starts to get all high as a damn kite on them. She continues to ingest iron pills at the rate of shitting literal iron bricks and her body ends up registering on metal detectors everywhere she goes.
By now it's quite obvious that something is wrong and demands to have the microchip removed, but all is too little too late once she begins hallucinating.
The hallucinations start to become more consistent, in the form of some middle aged man Edit names Edi. The magical flash that we didn't get to see clearly must've triggered the microchip's response within the body. Boss guy explains in a cut scene that the human cells seem to be merging with the microchip and are now multiplying. Edi is the technology growing within her, but almost like her own subconscious in that he becomes a projection of herself merging with the AI.
He takes the form of some guy Edit played doctor with in her childhood, but now he's a full fledged 'ghost' who only she can see. He feeds off of her (hence the iron pills) and can control her body (eg her metabolic rate). Shes finds that her enhanced abilities are due to Edi who can 'program' her to do things she's never learnt such as spontaneous kung fu when faced with three huge henchmen.
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| this is not what it looks like... |
He controls other things too, and before we know it Edit's own subconscious and Tommy Lee Jones look alike is fucking her senseless. You know you're watching a foreign film when shit like that happens. lol.
Anyways... back on track, After realising that the government and Boss guy are hunting her down, Edit becomes a fugitive, unable to return home. She eventually removes her ID chip (a futuristic equivalent to what we'd call a passport or being "on the record") and attempts to rescue Abel from Boss guy with the help of an assortment of her friends. A stealth sequence is assembled and the gang hide out with her for now.
Anyway, if I were to quickly get to the point, Edi continues to grow and take over Edit's body, to the point where she is on the verge of death. I guess this is where I'm kind of over following the plot- I'm on the homestretch and just waiting out the next ten odd minutes for a resolution.
What I got? Edit faints on a bag of trash and a few moments later, the mechanical organism within her is removed and used to figure out the "formula". Everything is all snap happy and there are no consequences to Edit becoming a national fugitive- everything goes back to normal. Yikes.
Thoughts:
I probably sound fed up of recapping this at this point, but no- that is what truly happened. If you made it all the way here after reading this, you probably feel as cheated as I do when I watched it. For such a "bizarre" film, the ending was vanilla as hell, basic- heck, even mediocre. I was convinced Edit would die and become a heroic sacrifice for the greater good, but in the end the build-up of her character being a thematic device was practically undone in the last 5 minutes. Not sure what on earth happened there, and frankly, I'm not particularly busting to know.
Viewing this film was an experience in itself. I had no idea what I was getting into- the weird, the good, the bad. I liked the style of art used but the animation was lacking. The beautifully stylised background/setting- specifically the buildings- were full of detail and didn't fall short of dimension either. It looked very 'anime'-inspired, even rivalling the quality of the films coming from Japan's advanced animation industry.
Impressive in that regard, but the film fell into the trap of looking very obviously low-budget in terms of actual animation. Everything was blatantly static and painfully immobile at times. This was very transparent within the animation of the characters, most likely due to the art style of them being very flat and boxy. I'm not sure if it was intentional, but the animation flaws show especially in the character's clothes. The clothing design was just bizarrely outdated for a futuristic movie. Most of all, there was an absence of audience connection due to how limited the animation was.
I've seen plenty of cartoons with basic, similar styles that have still managed to bring a breath of life to the characters, just in minor details of movement and such. This movie lacks most of that.
I'm not sure why they would utilise such a drastically different style to the backgrounds, but it was a distracting component of the film to say the least. The cartoon-y, amateur style of the people is a sure departure from the light, detailed style of the background. Weird combination, didn't work for me. I'm going to assume, more than anything, there was an issue with the budget.
Overall the concept of the film was interesting- technology and humans becoming one organism represents a prominent problem in today's society. Our relationship with technology and the impact it has on our lives is a debatable issue. But I guess the motivations and the backbone of the film were slightly juvenile in my opinion. Wouldn't it be awesome if there was a single formula that could explain everything in the entire world and our complete existence? The treatment of the issues was a little bit too simplistic for this to be seen as a smart, complex film. I felt that the plot overall collapsed on itself and the animation was too weak to call it a substantial film. It was my type of movie though, nothing screams boring more than a vanilla straight up plain movie- which this was not!
✯✯/5
And that was another chapter done and dusted.
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