If I read the mood right, public taste might actually dovetail somewhat with the release of Idiots and Angels -- the latest and best feature by the defiantly do-it-yourself animator/auteur Bill Plympton.
An animated feature without dialogue? Wall-E had that opening 30 minutes of wordless animation, and Up had that lengthy, silent life-in-a-montage, both of which were praised by cineastes and the public alike.
An animated feature that doesn't try to ape photographic reality? Persepolis, anyone?
Plympton's darkly witty universe is an esthetic jump from these, a much more anarchic and grotesque place. And if you've never seen his work before, it may take a while to absorb his visions, as well as his urge to disgust and amuse. The Oscar-nominated animator, who pencil-draws every single frame himself, has created a noir reality that is both rich and minimalist, a dark fantasy that ultimately reveals a soft romanticism in its soul.
The story opens with the angrily opened eyes of its protagonist, awakened against his will by the combined reveille of his alarm clock and a bird at the window. Both become victims of violence. Before he takes what we discover to be "his" stool in his favourite seedy bar, we've seen him blow up the car of a guy who "stole" his parking spot.
This is a man so irredeemable, he's capable of sudden, brutal acts of sexual assault. He traffics in guns. When a chrysalis hatches in his hair, revealing a butterfly (a decidedly surrealist touch), it delights the bar's piggish denizens (the brutish bar owner, his comely wife and an obese, chain-smoking, wannabe sexpot). Surrounded by expressions of delight, and holding the newly born lepidoptera in his hand, he does the only thing a man of his character would do (guess what?).
Seldom has a black heart been served up so vividly.
And then -- as if in karmic payback for the events of the previous day -- our nameless hero wakes to discover a pair of vestigial wings on his back. He cuts them off. They grow back.
Moreover, they seem to have a mind of their own, and that mind is intent on doing good.
Beginning as objects of ridicule, the wings soon become objects of dark desire -- indeed one sinister plotter's intention for the wings is more horrible than anything our protagonist could have come up with at his worst moments. And as our hero discovers his soul, their fate becomes intrinsic with his own.
Although Idiots and Angels does literally soar at times, it is largely confined to the bar environment, a dark box circa 1950, in a world where the cars seem to resemble giant beavers.
Smoke, whether it is emitted from an exhaust pipe or a cigarette, has a solid quality, as if it's extruded like waste.
The toxic, creepy environment practically cries out for purification.
And Idiots and Angels is nothing if not a redemptive story, expressed in waves of flight-of-fancy images and dark gags.
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