Heaven and Earth Magic

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.

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.

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.

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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The thing about Heaven and Earth Magic is the sound design from Harry Smith was more unnerving and queasy than the visuals; the discord among the various cries, wails, barking, the calm of the wind, baby cries and horns and the general industrial cacophony is what makes this so entrancing. Smith reminds us that when you have noise put to visuals it is what makes everything so completely untethered to reality even as these are things that had to be hand crafted and shaped from reality.

You are caught up in what is essentially set pieces about building up and breaking down shapes and people, how some will consume and some will create and some will take away just as quickly. There is no rhyme or reason to anything but there is some sort of dream logic going on, like when the one guy who swallows a helper then gets his eye injected with a needle that makes it bug out.

Some of this - no who are we kidding most of of it - is nonsense and experimentation in shifting around shapes and figures and so on. But I'd be lying if I said I didnt get more into it the longer it went on. I figured this would get tiresome as this pre Terry Gilliam Monty Python approach to cut-out random silliness built and changed over time. What I didn't expect was that I'd want to see what happened to that... watermelon-head guy or if that fish would make a move on that girl.

Drama, man!