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ANIMATION WORLD MAGAZINE - ISSUE 5.10 - JANUARY 2001
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The Philosophical Stone of Animation I am tempted to quote now what Joël Magny, the French critic, said about Friedrich Wilhelm Murnau's films: "It is as if the shadows acting in his theatre arose from the screen itself, from the film-strip, to dissolve in darkness later on. Those wavering figures and their ephemeral adventures seem to have been extracted for just one brief moment, with supreme effort, from nothingness and darkness." Murnau was not an animator in the proper sense of the word, of course. But his fascination with the uncanny as well as the precision work that such films as Nosferatu, Faust or even The Vogelöd Castle obviously required seem quite close to an animator's way of thinking in terms of individual frames. Graf Orlok, or Nosferatu, as he appears in the film of the same title, has an aura of singular mystery and horror. Some commentators will have it that the character in question was played by a real vampire passing as Max Schreck, meaning "fear." His name cannot be found on any roster of actors' names of that time. His uncanny movements are almost identical to those of an animated puppet. Experimenting with the movement of inanimate objects, light and optics in their animated films, the Quay brothers have noiselessly crossed over to the realm of live-action movies, working with undiminished concentration and studying the mysterious relationships between the world of live humans and their acquired gestures on one hand and the surrounding stage-sets made of objects on the other. All of this is done in the brothers' feature film The Institute Benjamenta. The Quay brothers were inspired by metaphysical European writers: Bruno Schulz, Franz Kafka and Robert Walser. Yuri Norstein decided to recreate the fantastic atmosphere of Gogol's stories. He made Akakij Akakijewicz Baszmaczkin, the main character from The Overcoat, genuinely, pulsatingly alive. The subtle psyche seems to shine through the figure that Norstein has created on the screen. Just a few seconds into the projection we forget that there is any "animation" involved and start feeling as if we were spying on some living creature in its intimate world, where it goes about its business with singular innocence, like a tiny animal deep in its little burrow. Yuri Norstein once declared in an interview that he felt more like a magician than an avant-garde artist. I can readily empathise with the passion hidden in that statement, with the desire to give life to the beings that one creates, not caring to place oneself in any sort of context with regard to the general trends along which art develops. I think that the above-quoted remark made by Murnau fully reflects an important quality of Norstein's work in which the author by the power of his talent reveals to us "with supreme effort" and concentration a live world that no human eye has seen. The creative properties of darkness quite obviously come into play there: as soon as a dim beam of light briefly illuminates the ceiling, detecting a small cat-like animal that runs across a girder, the viewer feels that the whole zone of darkness is saturated with an invisible presence which can take shape at any moment due to a sudden flash of light. The characters of Akakij Akakijewicz, his housekeeper and his cat, as well as the snowy streets of St. Petersburg, seem like a vision produced through the alchemical process of transmutation. At the bottom of a black kettle a gleam of pure gold appears. One could quote here the names of other artists: Susan Pitt, Igor Kovalyov, Raoul Servais, David Borthwick, Piotr Kamler, Jerzy Kucia or my ex-students, Agnieszka Woznicka and Annica Gianini. All of them -- just like those mentioned earlier -- treat animation as a medium of metaphysical inquiry, proving the seriousness of their work with titanic effort and concentration. Whoever begins to compile such a list runs an obvious risk: it is difficult to stop adding new names, but the only people I can talk about are those whom I have come to know closely. I am sure that everyone would present a slightly different circle of artists with whom he or she feels connected to by some kind of affinity. I have noticed that none of the films that I had in mind when writing this essay uses dialogue or any sort of commentary; some of them are completely silent. Maybe words are too unequivocal, maybe they disrupt the mood of mystery, defile the purity of a process which is as self-governed as flowing water, growing plants, moving animals, a chemical reaction, an alchemical transmutation. Although my thoughts on the connection between animation and alchemy are naturally biased, I hope that the above comments can be interpreted as universally valid. I also believe that they can inspire further reflection on this subject. But here is where my own reflections end. Translated by Michal Klobukowski. Piotr Dumala is a Polish director, animator, screenwriter who has produced several award-winning films, including Gentle Spirit (Lagodna), Walls (Sciany), Franz Kafka and Crime and Punishment. Recently he has animated dozens of episodes of Nervous Life, a series for television, and teaches animation at the Film School of Lodz in Warsaw. Dumala is also a writer of short stories and essays, a poster designer (he won the prize for best poster at the Annecy Festival in 1993) and an illustrator of books and journals. He is also a guest professor at the Komstfack Animation House in Eksjö , Sweden, and the Film School in Lodz, Poland.
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