« Puzzlehead vs. Pyramid Head | Main | Burlesque Show! »

April 23, 2006

Musings Made While Counting Electric Sheep

I'd readily call myself a cinematic thrill-seeker. I openly seek out and embrace originality in film, and have developed a bit of an addiction to the bracing experience of seeing a work that at least seems to offer something completely new (on both sensory and intellectual levels, in the best of cases, although I think there's some room for exclusivity there). I love it when a film makes me prick up my eyes and ears. But all that said, I'm rather glad my appreciation for the familiar hasn't been numbed. I'm not talking here of the simple pleasures of a comfort film, but of the bedrock of archetypes that I can always count on to break my fall on those more ill-advised kinescopic cliff jumps.

This is what I was thinking about halfway through James Bai's lovely Puzzlehead, when I realized that I knew exactly where the story was going and most of the steps it would take to get there; and that I was extremely satisfied to see it following that course of action. The film is (by the director's own admission) an update of Frankenstein, and, like so many films before it, it adheres the specific beats of Shelley's novel fairly closely. There are only so many stories in the world, and this is one of the better ones, and it has implicit to it so many primal issues ( as science fiction so often does) that it can be retold almost verbatim with a slight accent to the perspective and not seem at all redundant.

Bai's accent occurs in his setting - an unspecified point in the future - and in his thematic focus, which takes the hubris central to Shelley's story as an understood element, and extracts from it a specific crisis of identity. Of course, this opens up the film to further points of comparison; to Blade Runner, and to A.I., and to all the other stories that have explored the psychological implications of machines that look and act and think like humans. These are the paradigmatic, parabolic paradoxes of science fiction; they can be made to seem new - witness Shane Carruth's breathless reinvigoration of all the classic time travel dilemmas in Primer - but often it's enough that they're done well. As in this case.

But back to the context. The film is narrated by its titular automoton, who informs us that he was created in his maker's likeness "after the decline." Whatever cataclysm he may be referring to is never made clear, but its repurcussions are evident in the the fascinating, timeless wastelands Bai has created, both interior and exterior. The industrial landscapes through which the characters scurry to and fro are disconcertingly silent; there are few cars, and fewer people (one of the film's most striking sequences uses an act of incidental violence as set dressing). Everything is gray and diluted. In contrast, the turn-of-the-century brownstone in which most of the film takes place seems illuminated by Victorian gaslight; diffused stripes of yellow and green cut across the dark nooks and crannies, barely illuminating technological implements which, so central to the story, are nearly impossible to date. The production design is, in one sense, very subtle; but like that violent beating in the streets, it is put in focus precisely because it is unremarked upon. Bai, with production designer Jessica Shaw and cinematographer Jeffrey Lando, is intent on creating a world of stringent, almost exhaustive constancy, bound together by a delicate harpsichord score.

The entire film is infused with that sense of care; it was shot over three months in various dilapidated corners of Brooklyn, and while such a schedule may seem grossly distended for a low budget independent film, it's nothing compared to the seven years of post production work that followed. The 16mm film was cut on a flatbed; every single sound was recorded after the fact; there isn't a single frame that doesn't seem to bare the marks of careful consideration. This extends in part to the fifteen or so digital effects in the film, most of which are used to put lead actor Stephen Galaida in the same frame with himself (he plays both scientist and monster), and most of which are seamless; there are a few indulgent shots involving a mechanical iris which don't fit, but at least they still flicker with the same grain as the rest of the film.

Given my prediliction towards handcrafted films, I certainly appreciated those qualities in Puzzlehead; but what struck me the most about it was how perfectly it worked within its means. In other words, despite the film's low budget, there's nothing in it which would suggest that Bai had any sort of limitations. Neither, for the most part, did the brilliant Primer, or Greg Pak's Robot Stories; nor, looking back even further, did Godard's Alphaville or (my personal favorite) Marker's La Jetee. These films participated in their genre by virtue of their ideas; science fiction, after all, is not dependent on the special effects and action sequences that have come to define it. While studios will occasionally release a serious work like Soderbergh's version of Solaris, I think independent filmmakers could do quite a bit to reclaim the genre.

Or perhaps they already are, and the films simply aren't being released. Case in point: nearly a decade after it started shooting, Puzzlehead has yet to find a distributor. It premiered at Tribeca a year ago, had a short run at the Pioneer Theater in NYC a few weeks ago, and will presumably continue to screen at festivals until it finds a well-deserved home in some acquistion catalog. Upcoming screenings are as follows:

• April 20- 21, Amsterdam Fantastic Film Festival)
• April 29, Sci-fi London
• May 6, Santa Cruz Film Festival
• May 11, FANT Film Festival (Bilbao)
• May 18-21, Jacksonville Film Festival
• June 14-25, Durban Film Festival (South Africa)

Catch it if you can. It's a great spin on an old number. And, in case you missed it, here's Matt Zoller Seitz's interview with Bai, which is how I learned about the film in the first place.

* * *

I've had science fiction on the brain for the past few weeks, due to a project I've been developing. In particular, I'm concerned with the rift between pop sci-fi and its more intellectual incarnations. I'd be interested in hearing from anyone who feels like responding: what are your favorite examples of the genre, and why?

Posted by David Lowery at April 23, 2006 03:21 PM

Comments

Posted by: Jake at April 25, 2006 01:25 PM

Posted by: bryan at April 26, 2006 01:17 AM

Posted by: Ghostboy at April 26, 2006 05:27 PM

Posted by: bryan at April 27, 2006 11:13 PM