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kubelkind wrote: Mon Oct 04, 2021 12:02 pm Plastic Semiotic (Radu Jude)
From what I've seen by Jude, he's big on using elaborate formal strategies to make political and social statements which I find to be a bit crass and obvious (if admittedly oft-true), running more on cartoonish misanthropy than detailed analysis, despite a continual checklisting of his country's (and the world's) historical atrocities. He also has a tendency toward the "inventing horrible people and then saying "aren't people horrible?"" method that I find exasperating in other film makers. However, there's usually some wit and invention involved, and I'm prepared to cut him some slack 'cos who can blame anyone for being down on humanity these days? So I keep watching, I'm sure he'll make something I'll think is great some day.
Of the 4 films I've seen, this new festival short may be my favourite yet. For a start it is only 22 minutes long, and it looks like he's found the perfect cast for his methodology here - a bunch of cheap and ugly plastic toys. "Plastic Semiotic" packs in a large amount of plastic doll tableaux, fixed-frame stationary of course (most dolls don't move, though the occasional clockwork thing whizzes past), roughly arranged on a birth-to-death lifecycle. Which means we get the childish delights of seeing plastic toys behaving badly, performing sex acts and war atrocities, crashing their cars and being eaten by smiling but menacing teddy bears, that kind of thing. Jude's referencing of Chekhov and Flaubert in his press material and the film's gormless title for something that isn't really too much bigger or cleverer than a sniggering 8 year old putting a naked Action Man doll on top of a naked Barbie is also hilarious, as is the vision of grown adults playing with dolls for hours to make this. The arrangement of toys here is pretty elaborate and there's a lot of scenes, in fact each one could stay on the screen a fair bit longer for me.
The main pleasure of "Plastic Semiotic" is the feeling of admiration of something which a lot of work must have gone into, even if the results are a bit...questionable. A bit like being impressed by a guy who has made a perfectly to-scale replica of the Taj Mahal out of matchsticks. Nowt wrong with that, of course, but this is another Jude film of high minded ambition and juvenile execution,albeit a funnier one than usual.