Heaven and Earth Magic

Over "Heaven and Earth Magic"'s brief 66 minute long runtime, my personal score for the film went from a 9 to an 8 to a 7 to a 6. This unfortunate spiral downwards is due to its painstaking tediousness. While this film is a unique, fascinating, and surreal cinematic voyage that takes the viewer to a magical world unlike any other, it simply over welcomes its stay. This would be an amazing short film, but instead Harry Smith felt the need to drag it on and on despite how uneventful it was. Also, I had a real petpeeve with the amount of dropping water in this movie. My bathroom sink has been acting up lately and will not stop dropping. Drip-drop, drip-drop. It makes me want to flee the country, and this movie had to inject itself with that annoying noise and visual constantly. By the end, I was shaking with anger the second that visual/audio combo ungraceful exposed itself upon my screen.

You know what, this little experiment actually doesn't even deserve a 6/10. I'm bringing the score down to a 5. This film may be highly influential and unique, but it's damn annoying and tedious after a while, despite its runtime being barely over an hour.

That's essentially what can be said to best describe "Heaven and Earth Magic", magnum opus of the avant-garde animator Harry Smith. An unforgettable collection of visuals, this film is said by many to have an actual storyline, but because of the lack of coherency in presenting this storyline, it is best to go into the film without the expectations of a modern piece of narrative cinema. That basically means allow yourself to be swept into the cascade of images Smith presents, and don't worry about understanding a plot. It's really not one that you would be able to discern within the film without already knowing it ahead of time; so with that said, one should allow themselves to be transported into that other universe Smith wants you to feel and forget all else.

"Heaven and Earth Magic" was one of Harry Smith's rare feature-length films at a little over an hour, and that's understandable when you consider his style(s). I say this in plural because when watching his filmography, one can see the man made use of two different forms of animation: cartoon (hand-painted onto 35mm film) and cutout. The former was his earliest style, while the latter was his later one. Hence, considering this was made in 1962, it is through cutout imagery that Smith tells his strange tale, one about a woman who has a toothache that travels to Heaven instead of the dentist's and experiences a series of surrealistic occurrences. As stated above, this story is not told in any conventional sense to be sure, and it is only through a few recurring objects that you can see this happening.

Smith's previous animation shorts were normally less than five minutes, and consisted of similar visuals to the ones in this film. One can definitely see why this was his only feature film, because despite the 'plot' that explains some of the action, it's really no more than a lot of surreal cutout animation. The weird things that happen are one after the other, with a lot of - as my title states - recurring motifs. A skeleton, an umbrella, birds...the list goes on and on. These things are often accompanied by sound effects that sort of fit in, but certainly don't sync with the animation, further enhancing the experience. It's all very artistic, beautifully crafted, and does a great job at painting an alternate dimension - as the title indicates, it's magical.

The only thing I knew before I watched this movie that it was supposed to be experimental. Now I think experimental is an understatement, this movie is so abstract and so ambiguous I really don't think I could explain anything about it.

I see some people have enjoyed this movie, but I can't see myself enjoying this. The only movie I can really compare it to is Mad God, in similar fashion there is no dialogue, both movies feel like the creators plucked random scenes from their imagination and turned them into movies. Mad God at least is understandable, but Heaven and Earth Magic is just so filled with abstract meanings that it's almost unwatchable.

I had heard many great things about Harry Smith's Heaven and Earth Magic, but I never saw it. to be correct, I actually did saw a few parts of it, but I never liked it. it has got that kind of style that needs to be appreciated, and because I do not get very much excited by moving paintings, the works of Mister Smith never appealed to me. let's be honest if we can: this is no ordinary movie, but it's no animation film either. it's something in between, something that only exists in it's sole existence. having said that, I hope it's clear I don't like Heaven and Earth Magic. it's too strange for me. there seems to be no story whatsoever, except for a collection of rather sketches than story lines. I love the works of Stan Brakhage, even though they have no storyline neither. but Brakhage's movies are to be seen as random art, Harry Smith's movies however have nothing to do with art. they tell us nothing. but I believe you can give anything a reason of existence, even the films made by Harry Smith (not to be confused with Jack Smith, the godfather of the New York underground experimental gay cinema). Here, you can see many things relate to life and death, hence the strange title. Smith plays with confusion and depth, thereby creating original novelties on the screen. mutilation becomes art, and art becomes reformed, destroying the original being and furthermore changing in another lifestyle. however,if you have never seen a Harry Smith film, these words can't mean anything for you. Harry Smith needs to be viewed many times, his creations and demolition are too strange to understand with a first viewing. I'm a big fan of experimental short films with no sound, but this is silly. the only sound we hear, are coming from animals and things that distract us. Harry Smith uses these sounds to make his collage of life even more absurd. at a certain point, he uses a machine to play tennis with a baby as tennis ball. original, yes, but do we want to see this? no. it's quite boring, playing with life and death in a fictional concept. one thing is sure, of course, once you've seen this movie, you will never forget it.

US 66m, B&W Director: Harry Everett Smith

Heaven and Earth Magic is a surreal film fantasy using collage animation with late 19th century graphic images which are reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's animation work with Monty Python. Lacking any semblance of a plot, logic or narrative direction, Heaven and Earth Magic apparently follows the journey of a woman with a toothache to heaven and back, but not after the loss of a watermelon. The film's dreamlike action employs a series of related images and motifs related to death, including skeletal figures of humans and other animals. Visually interesting, for about fifteen minutes, I get the feeling that Heaven and Earth Magic might best be "understood" with the aid of some mind altering substance (Klaus Ming July 2013).