(Walerian Borowczyk & Chris
Marker/1959/France)
A short
surrealist animation about invention and space travel that hints at wider political
and philosophical concerns. The credits are sound tracked in a musical
jewellery box style that dissolves into futuristic synth washes and whooshes
presaging the science fiction to come. We are introduced to a house with
knocking and clanging industrial sounds before a man and his owl are seen. He
is working on a myriad of calculations and labours which produce a spaceship.
The designs of most of its parts are sourced from the natural world. After
checking the position of the moon he and the owl set off on a maiden voyage.
This involves peeping on a beautiful neighbour through her window, a flyby of
some officious person in an open top car, blowing his top hat off and then coming
out of a printer’s front door before a daring manoeuvre through the Arch of
Titus (identified by the inscription on it). Next the craft is seen following a
rocket up into space, cutting the moon in half and then landing on it. From
here there is a series of interactions with a giant man in space and a small
red arrow shaped ship with the letters SPA on the side. The red SPA ship and
the earlier rocket are in battle, shooting at each other. After a few
altercations the man’s spaceship is destroyed and he falls to earth where his
spirit rises up to an empty cloud. He is surrounded by many other clouds with
identical incarnations of his spirit suggesting the escapade in space is some
form of Sisyphean loop of existence.
There are many
little hints at wider meanings and inspirations. The engine of the spaceship is
called Axolotl which I would agree with David Surman could reference Julio
Cortázar’s 1952 short story about the psychic transmutation of a man into the
body of a salamander. This infers a deeper link between man and machine. An axolotl
can also regenerate limbs which might link to the final imagery of numerous
incarnations of the space pilot in the final scene. Outside of that the imagery
of the owl and the moon are obvious references to classical Greek and Roman
culture, the owl being Athena, goddess of wisdom and war and the moon suggests
Diane, Roman goddess of hunting who can also reflect the heavens. So we have a
clever inventor (wisdom) seeking new experience (hunting) in space using the
moon as his guide (the heavens) and getting involved in a battle (war). The
battle between the American looking rocket and the soviet looking SPA red arrow
must be a nod to the cold war space race that kick started the year before in
1958. The Arch of Titus is a Roman monument built to celebrate Titus’ military
victories, especially the Siege of Jerusalem. It became the template for many
other arches including the L’Arc de Triomphe. Borowyczyk was a Polish Jew
living in Paris at the time of making of Les Astronautes.
As it’s a short,
surreal and slightly absurdist film delivered with a sense of whimsical humour
it would be over reaching to try and pin point direct meanings or explicit
statements in the piece. It is fun though to take the various visual references
and attempt to decipher the thinking, conscious or otherwise, of the film
makers when creating it.
(3.5/5)
Imagine The Fantastic Planet had
fallen through the arse end of an event horizon into Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden
of Earthly Delights and you’ll be near enough to the 9 minutes of depraved
surrealism that is Yoji Kuri’s The Midnight Parasites. With an overriding theme
of consumption and excretion as a metaphor for the cycle of life and at times
an obvious critique of the capitalist system of consumption and production
(witness the Centipede like image of figures crouching in a circle, shitting
money to be eaten by the person behind), it is a bizarre but pointed assault on
the sensibilities of the viewer. 
The animation is close to kids’ programmes of
the time, with softness, lots of curved edges and genuinely very like The
Fantastic Planet in places. This deliberate style only adds to the feeling of
dislocation it induces. It is sound tracked by a playful and goofily sinister
score of undulating drones and picked guitar notes. A real treat: The Midnight Parasites
