Idiots and Angels

Released under the “Terry Gilliam Presents” banner, and definitely not for kiddies, Idiots and Angels is the latest wonder from the Imaginarium of Bill Plympton, the cult animator and two-time Oscar nominee (Your Face, Guard Dog) whose distinctive, sardonic hand-drawn films are known for their eruptions of raunchy sex and violence. The film is a dark, Bukowskian fable about a boozing, morally bankrupt man, frequenter of a dingy barroom called Bart’s, who one day sprouts a pair of angel’s wings. Despite his best, often bloody, efforts, he is unable to rid himself of the new appendages, nor to prevent the spiritual transformation they cause in his miserable life. Plympton describes his film as “very Eastern European — something like what Jan Svankmajer might make, or David Lynch if he made animation - very dark and surreal.” It’s also been compared to David Cronenberg. Idiots and Angels is fluidly drawn in pencil (although Plympton did, for the first time, resort to computers for colouring), completely without dialogue, and has a soundtrack featuring Tom Waits, Pink Martini, and Moby. “Plympton never knows when to stop. Thank God! Just as I’m asking myself, ‘How much longer can he maintain this dark and outrageously beautiful tale?’, he turns it upside down and inside out . . . How can he be so poetic, funny and cruel at the same moment? Where does he buy his drugs?” (Terry Gilliam). Colour, 35mm. 78 mins.

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MORE ANIMATION in April @ Pacific Cinémathèque!
Best of Ottawa 2009: April 1 + 4
Stéphane Aubier & Vincent Patar's A Town Called Panic: April 1-5 + 7
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