Ella works to assist her sick mother and help her finish her film project instop motion. Image by image, at the price of a resignation that limits to total submission, Ella bows to her injunctions and humiliations until the day her mother falls into a coma. Freed from the maternal state, Ella will finally be able to make her film and free her imagination. At what price?
Criticism ofStopmotion
Morgan of you
Behind this horror film that alternates between real shots and animation, we find the brilliant Robert Morgan whose imagination is equal to his deliciously entertaining decadence. Deeply rooted in gloomy universes, the host already signed one of the alphabetical entries of the barreThe ABCs of Death 2(2014), a truculente anthology at the crossroads of potache gag, horror and black humour. Also known for the very disturbingBobby YeahRobert Morgan has managed to create his own crado signature with a light title that doesn't allow for his blackness or many shorts that have been able to scratch fantastic festivals. A cat with Man's hands, an old man who observes the suicide of his neighbor or a man without a penis who sees the calvary that he may have suffered around him (as sure as the worst of the animated films that we have been given to see so far: see below). Each time, the artist leaves the part beautiful to the psychological erosion of his characters.
Tomorrow I Will Be Dirt (2021)
With his latest film presented at thePIFFF, Robert Morgan opts for springs more psychological than the short set, rest assured. This clumsy side, we find it directly inStopmotionWhen we understand that Ella, liberated from her mother's yoke, will start to realize a horrific tale that has much more to do with the similipupppet showof departure. Stunned by her work, Ella is taciturn, cut off in her small studio whose difference is hardly discerned with the filming set of her animation project. Her work irreparably separates her from her loved ones.
And on this point, Robert Morgan allows himself all the formal audacity, starting with a permanent exchange between real and fiction with transitions as brilliant as imperceptible by the game of travel. The camera can gradually move closer to the plate and immediately switch to the fruit of its work: animated images as we would see them in the final film which is then projected. The eyes of these little characters are lost in nothingness with a confusing abyss between the author, Robert Corman, his symbolic avatar, Ella, and the horrific tale in gestation. We are also witnessing the birth of these chimeras made of bric and broc.
To this is added a graphic part-handling but justified, the natural colors leaving room for a pastel range as if a filter were applied to the camera. The lips are sometimes bluish, the purple blood and the walls are sometimes pink and sometimes greenish, refer to a tortured imaginary, where interior decorations and landscapes merge. While Ella meets a girl with a well tempered character, she blows her dark ideas that could carry her story in three stages. Three key moments materialized by days and which gradually generate worrying echoes to the real.
Worried strangeness
Minimalist but never simplistic and always consistent in his approach,Stopmotionlock us up with his author; his psyche is systematically the point of view applied to the image. This gives rise to sequences like deprived of temporality as the markers fade as Ella abandons her work. Through clever editing games and a chiseled cutting, we see it evolve at different locations in the studio and the spectator wonders about the boundaries of reality. Do reality and fiction overlap?
Deeply fantastic in his approach,Stopmotionseems to give us the feeling of dedication that implies such self-denial inversely proportional to the incomprehension of the entourage. Like my train neighbors who looked at me with a twisted eye when I was seeing all of Morgan's work, we can imagine quite well the gap that still exists when certain people reduce the animation to children's cartoons and discover, astonished, short, or even outright obscene ones. Unlike the traditional director, the host does not work with the living.
Millimetre per millimetre, Ella gives life to these animated objects, heart of his work and leitmotiv to the hints of demiurges. In a mirror, one guesses the frustration and ingratitude that prevails in the profession where artists are often animators for another, before becoming themselves directors and find their own way. It's all the more interesting to know Robert Morgan's career, who has always locked the neurosis of his characters between four walls. LikeStopmotionwhich is an almost eight closed, these short films cultivate summary horror and a crescendo anguish.
His very first student projectParanoid (1994) seems to come to life inStop Motion, as a tribute with extra means. Hard not to think about it when the little girl gives her instructions for the first day of her story. In one as in the other, a single man feels spied by a creature matted in the shadow. We feel Robert Morgan reconnecting with these old demons. Have they ever left to tell the truth? There is this obsession with death that crosses all of his work with worms, corpses, and even necrophilia.Giger Never far away.
While the little girl is always more demanding with Ella and childhood deprives her of the politically correct barriers of the adult world, she submits increasingly glaucous ideas to Ella. Ella then resists using flesh to shape his creatures, a point of change to a whole other world. This is what gives this so singular and disturbing side to the characters animated by Robert Corman in his work. Poised, sticky and putrefaction, each of his characters gives nausea like an old steak that would have been crouped in the sun. It's crappy and hopeless and you'd almost think you'd smell cadavreous out of the screen. Indeed, nothing like the technique ofstop motionto give an organic side to creations, as it had already disassembledMad God, work of a lifetime by Phil Tippett (read ourcritical). Far from digital artifice, manual work gives a whole other emotion with complete control of the process, where CGI studios are increasingly dissipating stains, not to say alienating workers. As Roger Ebert pointed out on the paradox of stop motion:
« Computer graphics looks real but feel fake, and stop motion looks fake but feel real »
As a prisoner of a bad dream, Ella's view of the screen is free from all constraints, while Ella seeks to regain creativity through drugs. Robert Corman and his heroine revive materials to better rid our imagination.Stopmotionconstantly speaks to us by his narration scrupulously applied to the animated film. And his only pitfall is probably linked to his small budget, especially for the OST.
Strident violons, asynchronous piano notes: the experimental soundtrack ends up getting tired of being overrecycled. If it is part of the nervously exhausting device that adheres to the soul states of the host, a little more variety would not have been of refusal on that side. This can work for shorts, less for longs. Less harmful but not always happy, the act of some secondary characters leaves to be desired in rare scenes. A defect which, however, contributes to the staggered side of Ella's perception and which can be more readily forgiven.
Despite these few black spots,Stopmotiongives the feeling of a bad dream on hold, as when we wake up in the middle of the night without remembering what horrors have gone through our dreams, or if the nightmare is really over. More than a horror movie,StopmotionA technique that invests and surpasses its artists in all aspects. Phil Tippett had dedicated thirty years of his life to carry out his projectMad God11 years forJunk Headby Takahide Hori, self-taught artist who like Ella worked totally alone. There is no doubt that none of these real or fictional artists would dare to refute the commitment, dedication and discipline that are inseparable from the facilitator's profession.
Trailer ofStopmotion
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