Slipp Jimmy Fri

The problem with modern animation is that the first observations from commentors seem to be about the quality of the animation. It distracts, at least when the film is big budget.

The advantage of this sort of animation for me is that the filmmaker can go further into the extreme, can be more dramatic and large, more risky and imaginative, than the limits of humans and cameras allows. This film means more to me on that account than any of the Pixar projects, and I admire them greatly. But at the end of the day with them, they leave you were they found you, except for their experiments with depth and space.

this instead tries for something deeper, something that matters, the stuff that justifies theater.

The basic spine of this is the filmmaker's brother. He was a performer killed by drugs, like the titular Jimmy. Often violent and pitiful, once you know this fact, the portrayal of the elephant is pretty heartwrenching. Overlayed on it is a vehicle for Nordic humor: stuff an American audience will miss, both because the jokes are beyond us and because the English script is different. There are some engaging episodes here: funny, disgusting, poignant. They are the means used for transporting us, the tricks used to convince us into collaborating on maintaining an alternative world.

Its that world that works for me. Its a mix of the previously mentioned extremes plus three traditional forms. Its a conventional tragedy. Everything grinds toward the inevitable. But its a noir too. There are incredible coincidences brought on by the mechanism of watching. Its a closed world that produces unlikely twists and that captures people in a fate that is for our amusement. And it is folded. Usual folds are simple, with one viewer mechanism. Here there are many viewing agents, each one controlling some element of the noir (except the Norweigians, a joke). Hunters, Laplanders, some Russian circus punks, some animal rights terrorists, and a Moose.

All of these three: tragedy, viewer-incited noir and observer-folding reinforce the story of the lost brother.

This works. Its worthy.

Ted's Evaluation -- 3 of 3: Worth watching.