Sztuka spadania

Tomasz Bagiński's "Sztuka spadania" ("Fallen Art" in English) poses the question of what constitutes glory amid war. The main character makes short movies featuring the dead bodies of soldiers pushed off of a springboard onto a slab of concrete. In short, he turns the soldiers' entire history into his own entertainment. I get the feeling that Bagiński made this as a reference to his own government's participation in the invasion of Iraq. Poland's government, like the rest of the governments in the so-called coalition of the willing, joined up with the invasion and occupation despite massive opposition among its population. I don't know how many people Poland lost in that most ill conceived of wars. There can be no doubt that it will weigh on the Poles' conscience for decades to come.

Anyway, this is a good cartoon. The best cartoons are these short ones, as opposed to the features voiced by the celebrities of the moment.

Or, more exactly, propaganda of war. dark, macabre - the music from Balkans as clue - , well crafted and proposing the expected provocative story of Tomek Baginski. ironic parable about war, armies, soldiers and dark sides of "innocent" delights.

Set atop a rickety watch-tower with a platform more akin to a diving board, a troop of soldiers routinely keep watch, and just as routinely seem to plummet onto the concrete below - all handily timed for the awaiting photographer below to capture their new-found splatted-ness with his camera. The photographs are rushed indoors where they form the most unlikely source of ... art! Indeed, the larger than life "artist" seems to be able to reinvigorate the corpse's image on screen to mirror his own movements - just like dance! Such athleticism takes it's toll, though, and soon he must rest. Who is this mysterious and sinister puppeteer - or is he, too, just a puppet? They must have a never-ending supply of sentries too! Great stop motion animation with a wee bit of slap-stick and a good dose of the macabre!

I had to make a short presentation for a work not so long ago, using this short film as background and I was quite delighted with it. The fact that I didn't know any work of this filmmaker has led to even more my admiration. There was so much in so short time I could talk about, first with details that are immense, starting with the title, the fact of not having human speech, symbolisms, plus a multitude of them in this cyclical story without end, where everything fit together but you're not quite sure what the main message is. And therein lies the joke of what parallelism may exist with the days of yesterday, today and tomorrow, with different reading each one of us will have after seeing it. I really believe that the major objective of this short was achieved, have fun (yes, because although we are facing a very dramatic story, the humor isn't a foreign language) and bring all the ingredients for us to cook with our imagination and perhaps even more than that.

In a long deserted military base a high rickety tower stands high above the ground. At the top is an officer awarding medals to damaged soldiers who survived the war before pushing them to their death on the ground far below. At this point their corpses are photographed by another sinister man and the resulting image sent to his employer far from the site.

This is the whole plot of the short, apart from the detail of the ending which I'll not spoil beyond saying that it is oddly comic and darkly weird. In terms of straight animation the ideas and the creation of them are good as the short looks good but also seems to mix styles and produce animation techniques within other animation techniques. It also is delivered with a real sinister air that works well with the more comic (but still sinister) conclusion. So on this level I liked it as a film, but on the downside I did feel like it left me hanging a little bit.

It plays like a comment on the disposable nature of life to some within the military (this is a Polish film) whereas from a slightly different angle it appears to be commenting on the treatment of soldiers who no longer serve a use on the battlefield. And I could go on – there are a couple of different readings of this film but it doesn't really help the viewer to appreciate them. If there is a serious point here then the comic ending rather detracts from the seriousness of it; conversely if there is only a rather macabre creative theme to the short, the specifics of the start seem very, well, "specific" for there not to be a pointed commentary aspect to it.

Fallen Art still works as a short animation though and it is well created with a dark and sinister air to the comic of the grotesque. I just wish that it had been clearer to the viewer in regards what it was trying to be/do.