Heavy Traffic

by Dane Youssef

This is rumored to be animation-pioneer Ralph Bakshi's favorite among all his projects. And no wonder. This is his story! A 22-year old Jewish-Itallian spends his time playing pin-ball non-stop and drawing. He still lives with his parents, an Itallian man who cheats on his wife and a Jewish woman who's so emotionally torqued up--such a drama queen, that when Angelo comes home after a night with his lady, she hits him over the head with a frying pan and sticks his head in the oven.

There's always domestic unrest in any family, particularly with interracial married couples who lived in the Bronx around this time. But they're so wound-up, so ready to snap--they come to blows and sharp instruments a little too quickly.

Way too quickly, in fact. Angelo and Ida's Punch-and-Judy relationship--coupled with the problems that reside outdoors in the Bronx--Michael seems doomed to have some of it rub off on him. "You hang around garbage long enough, you start to stink," as they say.

But Michael has an outlet for his angst and confusion. Rather than fall into the trap many around him seem to, he vents himself at the drawing board. He draws a lot of the people and places in the Bronx. Although he seems to dislike many of them, they're so broad and colorful and wired, they translate easily to caricatures.

Bakshi takes us to all the usual haunts we visit in his movies--trashy ghetto neighborhoods with buildings that look condemned, dirt-cheap apartments, behind the wheel of cars, rooftops, nightclubs, bars, brothels.

The lives of all of the Bronx inhabitants: Jews, Itallians, blacks, drag queens, junkies, vagrants, hookers, cops, thugs and the like. And by using animation, Bakshi (and Michael) sort of illustrate their world and their eccentricity, which is so dangerous, it borderlines on insanity.

I wasn't particularly crazy about the disco remix of "Scarlbrough Fair." What can I say? I fell in love with the original.

But I suppose it does fit in with the nature of the film. Bakshi uses a lot of shots of Michael playing pinball. He's a big pinball fanatic. It's obviously a metaphor, perhaps for the hectic universe in which Michael bounces from one scenario to another, for which he's constantly out of place.

Carol is a black woman who works at a local bar where Michael draws on the roof. She's loud, she's opinionated, she's passionate. And she really seems to be about something. She's not just an ethnic joke.

Like all bars, there are lots of colorful locals there, plenty of dangerous ones to be sure.

Michael tries to score free drinks with his art. But that's all he tries to score Michael's no ladies' man and he knows it. He's a deep, sensitive, skilled artiste. And a sitting duck for some of the louder, tougher guys who make up the city.

It doesn't help matter that he's a virgin and everyone knows it. At one point, some greasers try to hook him up with a loose woman who's eager to have it with a guy who's so fresh and green. Although this leads to a disaster. Even his own father tries to hook him up. Now there's a true loving father for you.

Michael has an eye for Carol (many people at the bar she tends do), not because he's dying to get laid like nearly every other male. But he seems to genuinely feel something real for her. When she offers it up to him in gratitude for a favor, he faints. He wants her, but he's just not ready.

Ida is fussy and over-protective of her son, just like a mother hen. Or rather a Jewish mother. Angelo wants his son to be more of a "man's man." Like all of Bakshi's films, this contains a lot of graphic violence and sexual images, as well as caricatures in the ethnic vein.

But surprisingly, in the strangest way, it contains real heart, as well as some sweetness. The relationship between Michael and Carol has to be seen. Bakshi could've made her just an archetype like everyone else and he didn't. She's just as developed and human and relative as dear Michael is. These two deserve one another.

"Heavy Traffic" is wildly imaginative and thrilling in all it's glory. Like "Being John Malkovich," we actually feel like we're inside the author's head rather than his film. This truly ranks as Bakshi's best. He deserves more credit for this than "Fritz The Cat." How much of all this take place in Michael's mind and how much of it takes place in his reality? Maybe they're one and the same. Maybe not. Maybe we're supposed to figure it out. It up to us. Just like Michael's life is up to him.

The characters in the city are so damn cartoonish and erratic already, they transfer them into cartoon characters without losing anything in the translation.

Bakshi doesn't paint a pretty picture of the city and it's locals. But then again, he never has, has he? That's one of the things he's known for.

But that's not the only thing. Let's hope that when he goes... he'll be remembered for a lot of things.

Especially this one. It is... not only his best, not only one of the year's best... but of the best.

--For Ralph Bakshi, for film, forever, Dane Youssef

A few previous critics of this work by Bakshi slam it for being "stereotypical" and thereby negative as a whole by implementing foul humor, language and at times even suggest that because it's a cartoon that it owes something to child-oriented animation. This is absolute pig swill. Bakshi's vision in Heavy Traffic is to present life on the streets as he knows it. His style is truly unique, overlaying animation onto real stills and film sequences to add to the New york flavor that exists throughout the film. An abusive Italian married to a worrying Jewish woman is part of our reality. Gays being abused and people having to worry about their jobs being taken by minority groups for less pay and benefits because they're more desperate than we are is part of our reality. Love regardless of skin color, and facing the consequences for it is SADLY part of our reality. By using animation, Bakshi is exercising his artistic abilities while setting it in times and themes he is familiar with. This film, along with the criminally banned Coonskin should be hailed as modern masterpieces not for their visual aspects, but for the truth lying beneath and his unabashed look at how life really is. Comparing this film to "Shrek" is like comparing the original Night of the Living Dead to the recent Dawn of the dead remake. Granted they're both horror, but they're lightyears apart and don't use any of the same effects techniques. One, like Heavy Traffic, was made for social commentary, whereas the remake, like Shrek, is merely for our homogenized entertainment values.

Heavy Traffic is, like many of Ralph Bakshi's films, a like it or hate it affair, but for those that respond to it, the film provides many a surprising attack on sensibility, decency, and what it means to get by in urban sprawl. It's almost too personal; one can see Bakshi or friends of his having gone through some of the little things in the lower ranks of New York City's daily life (particularly Brooklyn life) as depicted here. But it's this connection to a personal reality- and then a TOTAL adherence to turning this reality on its head and making it as wild, violent, and sexually deviant as possible- that is the key to the success of Bakshi's film, the best of his I've seen so far. His main character, Michael, is probably loosely based on himself; a young, would-be underground cartoonist who lives with insanely irate parents (Italian father and Jewish mother), and interacts with the neighborhood he's in with a casual attitude and a little reluctance to join in the mayhem that goes on with such kooky cats. Enter in Carole, a black bartender who won't take s*** from anyone, who teams up as a business partner, more or less, with Michael to first get cartoons off the ground, then, so it goes, misadventures in prostitution. It all leads up to an ending that isn't expected, though a sort of double-piling of shock and pleasant surprise.

Heavy Traffic outlays Bakshi's outlook on life in a skill that could be called animated exploitation film-making. However, it's through this overloading of characters *meant* to be unattractive, sexually piggish, wretchedly racist (and, on the other side of the coin, sexist), and violent in the tradition of the Looney Tunes cartoons with the worst taste, that the film gets to the guts of the matter. It's a half-embrace, half-attack on a lack of values in a society, and as Baskhi relishes in his excess, he also is criticizing both himself for lapping it up and those in the neighborhood for being such eccentric mother-f***ers. And, as a satire should be, it's very funny, occasionally uproariously so. Scenes like Michael being pressured to get it on with the girl on the mattress on the roof, and the outcome as a sort of running gag; the scene with the song Mabeline playing, as Baskhi puts out drawings that are without much color, and look incredible for the reason that there's seemingly little effort put into the animation with the random over-the-top sexual positions; the little bits in the feuding with Michael's parents, the mother with her Jewish-star knife-holster and the father with his dedication to the "Godfather", who eats little people in his pasta, over anything really with his family; and when Michael presents "religious" cartoons to a dying old man, which to any prurient Christian taste is hilariously offensive and, well, cool.

Bakshi is so personal at times, with his taste in color schemes, in over-lapping images with film clips, combining live-action and animation (usually with dancing ladies on one side and a lurid little twerp gawking on the other), and even likely real family photos from his own family laid in, that it levels going too far. There's a tendency for self-indulgence, however not always the bad kind, if that makes sense, and one can see how the film can and has been vehemently criticized for what it is really trying to criticize in the film. But deep down, past the creative madman in Bakshi, is also a heart; his film ends on a touching note, as abstraction turns real and a totally live scene reveals another level to Michael and Carol, as real outcasts who are both totally stubborn, and somehow meant for each other. Heavy Traffic is a one-of-a-kind affair, and the kind of under-the-radar act of an outrageous spectacle that it could only be done in the 70s. Grade: A-

Can anyone give me one single reason why anyone should watch "Heavy Traffic"? I think it may be the worst film I've ever seen, and I'm saying that without a shred of hyperbole.

First, the animation: I know a lot of people find it charming, but it stinks. Yes, there are a few good sequences and some clever parts, but 95% is just crude and terrible. It's something that would have been much better if put into live action. Why animate something when it would be easy to show it live?

Second, the story. Where the hell is it? An "underground animator" (how cliche) hates his life and then goes out to become a pimp? Are you kidding me? There is no semblance of plot or logic. I know it's a "fantasy world" and all but that doesn't forgive Bakshi of not having any kind of plot whatsoever. A pathetic excuse for a script.

Thirdly, the stereotypes. Gays, blacks, Jews, Italians, the handicapped, everyone is fair game. And while I wasn't offended by these creations per se, I just found them lazy and uninteresting. Is there anything that separates Bakshi's Jewish mother from any other stereotype of a Jewish mother that you've ever seen?

I found this film a complete waste of time.

I just saw this for the first time on DVD. It's an excellent transfer.

Heavy Traffic must've been controversial back in '73, and caused quite a splash. But I really don't see why. This is a case where, if the movie had been made completely as live-action, no one would mention it today. The rambling and sometimes incomprehensible plot, extremely stereotyped characters, and subtle-as-a-Mack-Truck "social commentary" would've consigned this to a celluloid footnote.

Some of the animated sequences are clever, but without a strong plot and good characters, I found them to be interesting, but not compelling.