The Politics of Art & Authenticity

 More directed by Mark Osborne beautifully encompasses many art forms into a very brief but dense short film. Osbourne’s claymation skills are what bring this film alive especially with a script lacking dialogue. The music sets the mood and keeps the audience in an anxiously entranced state, never waking from Osbourne’s world. And off course there is the storyline. The protagonist, a gray blob with eyes, extremities, and a hatch door to his “inner creative ability and drive,” tries to invent a “Bliss” device which will make everyone happy. After struggling with his invention and being under the scrutiny of a boss for quite some time, the blob finally comes through and becomes “The Greatest Inventor Ever.” After achieving fame and fortune our hero quite literally feels empty inside. The audience is left with a shot of the protagonist longingly looking towards children playing. All of this points towards the idea that people are often times misguided in their ventures for fame and fortune, which won’t “invent” happiness.

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Madame Tutli-Putli directed by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski is a very metaphoric short film using puppets as a medium. The puppet work is excellent especially in mimicking real life bodily movements and the addition of real-life noises such as a character’s teeth clicking on a pen cap. The opening scene is a slow pan across a train platform of this woman, Madame Tutli-Putli, and her luggage. She clearly has a lot of baggage behind her and the weight she is carrying is immense. Her train cabin features five characters. men sitting in suitcases playing chess with “the board they have been dealt” as the train’s movements keep rearranging their game. Then, sitting across the cabin are three other people, an old man sleeping, a boy reading a book which will be preparing him for life, and a middle-aged rather crass gentleman. After a disgusting suggestion from the later, Madame Tutli-Putli looks up at his tennis bag and imagines him playing tennis. This suggests everyone is carrying baggage of some kind. Unfortunately for the woman with all the baggage in the world, this is a train where ghouls come on board and steal it from you, forcing you to move on. And this is exactly what happens. As Madame Tutli-Putli wanders the train after losing her luggage, stumbling her way through muck and the trains violent rocking, she is saved by a (recurring image) moth, which lifts her on her feet and leads her into the future. (?)