Heaven and Earth Magic

Nothing wrong with surrealistic animations and I can actually enjoy some of them from time to time but this movie was just too much. It didn't made sense in any way and I had no idea what was going on all or what the movie was trying to achieve and say.

There is absolutely no story in this. Just a bunch of random animations wobbling on the screen. And it's all quite abstract as well. Sizes and motions are all out of this world, so most of the time you really have no idea what you are watching. Stuff that happens just make no sense but all the worse; it doesn't even seem to have a point.

What was Harry Smith trying to tell with this movie or what was he trying to achieve with his animations? To me it probably will always remain a mystery, though some people still seem to be able to appreciate his work and especially this movie in particular. Glad some people still get something out of this movie. What's art to some is absolute rubbish to some others I guess.

Perhaps I could had still taken the movie if it was much shorter. An hour is just far too long for an pretentious, artistic, animated movie, in which absolutely happens story- or entertaining-wise. Yes, perhaps some good humor could had still made this movie somewhat more watchable as well but this totally isn't the angle this movie was going for.

The animations themselves also aren't that impressive to look at but I can still see how its style influenced other later film-makers and animators. However that still doesn't make this a good or interesting movie to watch. Not for me at least.

2/10

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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).

One of the less-noted luminaries of the beatnik/Bohemian undertow, HARRY SMITH was an artist of multiple mediums whose film index is chiefly comprised of animated short subjects which are now either lost or rarely screened, and this, his most celebrated work, released in 1962. The stark black and white feature is a jittering collage of 19th Century newsprint snippets which swirl and cavort upon a black expanse. As the images interact, amalgamate, and transmogrify in their jerky ebb and flow, they conduce to a colorless kaleidoscope of defamiliarized objects which vivify in gelastic, absurreal ways. The visuals are punctuated strangely by disconsonant stock audio effects.

Iconographically alluring at first, HEAVEN AND EARTH MAGIC gets a bit repetitious by the 20 minute mark, and seeing it through to the end is a moonshot for a dauntless few. Still and all, it's an admirably figmental and singular cinematic unicorn, and its stylistic flourishes inspired a minor movement in commercial art which was observable into the early 70s.

6.5/10. Rather distended at feature length, but a cultural relic of Bohemian artistic exploration which is truly one and of itself.

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.

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.