Some choose philately as a hobby. Others, like in Tomek Baginski’s Fallen Art, choose something slightly more exotic… and sick. © 2004 Platige Image.

Fallen Art
Everyone needs a Fun Project. You have your stamps; I have my Firesign Theatre airchecks; Dick Cheney has Iraq. When choosing a Fun Project, personal interests obviously are a factor, but resources are just as important. I don’t collect Fabergé eggs for the same reason you don’t: not enough shelf space and not enough disposable income. Many disturbing Fun Projects came out of Birkenau and Auschwitz, where the personal interests of those in charge ran from sick to sickest and the resources were human bodies. Under such conditions the various Fun Projects yielded soap and lampshades. For the character at the center of Tomek Baginski’s latest short Fallen Art, the end result of a Fun Project limited to similar human resources is something else entirely — Art.

Baginski is the creator of Katedra, an Oscar nominee for best short from two years ago; an otherworldly journey inside a cathedral on a distant planet whose visitors become literal pillars of the church. Fallen Art is also CGI, set somewhat closer to home on a forgotten South Pacific isle. The war — whatever war — is long over, but some of our boys have dug in and built up, establishing a camp behind barbed wire and camouflage netting whose main landmark is a rickety 100-foot-tall wooden tower. On it is a three-up-three-down sergeant with a body stretched generously on the X-axis and cactus stubble. On a signal from below, the sergeant is repeatedly going through an odd protocol: He orders a G.I. — one of a group waiting on the platform — to come forward. He mutters some inanities, pins a smiley medal on his chest, pats him on the back and kicks him off the platform to his death.

They’re making him proud, those boys. He’s getting real job satisfaction, and down below another man is practicing his hobby: a ghoul with a doctor’s apron and a stoic face is photographing the results of the Sergeant’s work on the pavement. Another G.I. takes the bloody snapshots into the main building, where General A puts the icing on the cake. A tortoise-shaped beast with elephantiasis of everything but the head, General A takes the photo with eager hands and feeds it into a giant metal press. The machine transfers it to glass, enlarges it and feeds it into a slot below a stack of hundreds of other frames just like it. There’s a projector attached to the machine. Guess what you can do with a projector and a series of still images put in the right order?

It’s animation, it’s animation about animation, it’s a political statement, it’s sick sick shit, it’s hilarious, and when you see it in this year’s Animation Show you’re going to want to shout, “Run that again!” because it is also a thing of beauty. It’s surreal like every good toon should be, but it’s also cinematic to the point of vérité. The wide, shaky sweeps and trembling telephoto closeups that were daubed into Katedra are ladled on now; the shallow depth of field, the blowing wind, the shimmering particulate matter and onrushing clouds put you on the grass, in the room, behind the furniture, taking quick glances, too close for comfort. As Richard Lester’s Four Musketeers looked to all appearances like 17^th century France with a documentary camera plopped into it, so does Fallen Art present an immersive reality with a time of day and a longitude.

Every facet of this short is wicked cool. The acting is precise and restrained, and when the General dances (yes he does) his moves are natural and his weight follows. Plus the music will have you scanning the credits for the next item on your want list. (To save you squinting, the cut is “Asfalt Tango” from the album Baro Biao on German import, by the terrific Fanfare Ciocarlia, who could power all of Romania with their staccato.) Fallen Art is agitprop with a beat, and you’re going to have endless fun turning your friends on to it afterwards, and picking their jaws up off the carpet.