The Politics of Art & Authenticity

As I look at my reality, I stop and wonder, “What the hell am I doing here?”

After all, this is what I wanted. I wanted to leave Denver, move the to the Big Apple, and become the person I thought I couldn’t be 1600 miles west.

MORE, created by Mark Osborne, in some ways depicts my reality.  I wanted big and I got BIG. NYC it was. It’s not like humanity doesn’t work that way. Or maybe it’s just our society that does. We strive for something so unreachable that at some point along the journey we lose the essence of who we really are and what we [thought] we wanted in the first place.

Even more so I find myself content with who I am. Or maybe it’s more of the idea that we all are programmed to come into acceptance with who we are and who we become each day.  Or maybe we’re not.

That was a tangent….

MORE is about a grey blob who works at a factory assembling lenses that change the grey world in which he lives into something happy. He aspires to be someone else. He wants to see the world through a different lens. His lens is the spark of color in his box. When he opens this box, an array of colors comes out. It’s almost as if it is that spark that keeps him going every day.  He wants to be happy, so he creates a pair of goggle that makes him see colors.  He becomes a successful blob. But it’s then that he realizes he isn’t happy for he lost that spark trying to be something that could have sparked the desire to continue on.

On the other hand, Madame Tutli-Putli explores the baggage that we accumulate. In the beginning, we see a woman waiting for a train with all her possessions behind her. Her eyes are impacting. And for a moment we can almost forget she’s made out of clay. The image fades, and the next one show her in her compartment with all her possessions piled up. There is some sort of symbolism because there are times during which her possessions are actually people. I guess the concrete objects are symbols of her past and the people she met.  It seems that she is on the train to go somewhere new, a new beginning in a sense, but is afraid of letting go of the past.

Both films explore the human condition in very different forms. One explores desire and losing an identity in search of something that we aren’t sure exactly what it is, and the other explores human symbolism and the fear we have of losing memories as painful as they can be.

“MORE”

I think his “bliss” is malfunctioning.

The moment I saw this video, I instinctively thought of the 1984 Apple’s Macintosh Commercial.

Their depiction of grey, emotionally deprived society, and the “greatest” invention that would attempt to bring change seem to draw interesting parallelism to our lives as well.

The film starts off by showing a scene of children in the merry-go-round which is the clay protagonist’s dream,inspiration and motive behind his making of the “bliss.” This allows people to see what they want, and moves him to his success and to become the “world’s greatest inventor.” However, despite his achievement, he consumes all his light or driving force and is left with his empty shell.

It shows the futility of life in such a society where people attempt to temporarily satisfy oneself by avoiding the reality and seeking what they want to see through gadgets. This idea struck me as I recalled the Apple commercial. Steve Job’s idea was to liberate us from the 1984 “big brother” life through his “Apple products” but look where we are now. People, while praising the revolutionary products of Apple and Google, such as their smartphones and tabulates, are driven into the digital life, constantly influenced by the media’s glamourous pictures of celebrities and propagandas. Are we not becoming like the people wearing “bliss,” constantly straining our eyes with electricity and excessive amount of information? (If you take a look at the protagonist, you can see that his dark circles have become even darker as it goes to the end of the movie.) Although our lives, for now, do not seem as grey, it really gave me a chance to look back to our physical lives and think of what can be done to solve the problem from the root cause, not by just averting with an almost drug-like gadget.

As “MORE” showed a “symbolic” escape from reality with “bliss,”  “Madame Tutli Putli” depicts an actual running away from an unknown, sinister force.

It illustrates madame Tutli Putli’s  journey throughout her train ride. A normal “Chatelaine” reading women, she is in an unusual surrounding, in which two men are playing chess in the suite cases up on bag storage. And in front of her a tennis player, an asian boy, and a grandfather sit. Everyone and everything, but her, seems to disappear as the train is invaded by some dark, ominous group of people. Terrified, she runs around the hallways and end up in the dining section of the train as she discovers a butterfly which almost resembles a women waving her arms as it continues its fluttering.

Despite its longer screen time, compared to “More,” its unusualness added to my befuddlement. However, I was amazed by its delivery of atmosphere. How the real eye integrated with the rough surfaced puppet added to the uneasiness of the audience while, at the same time, leading us to the climax as the women runs through the narrow corridor of the train. I also liked how it started and ended with the butterfly, giving a sense of closure to the incomprehensible plot.

Sources

snap shot image : http://vimeo.com/7306050

Short films are intriguing in that they don’t normally use dialogue. The person viewing the film has to figure out what’s going on by listening to the background music and paying close attention to the actions and facial expressions of the characters.
While watching More by Mark Osbourne I felt an overwhelming depression come over me.  The background music helped set the tone in the short.  The music was simple and repetitive, like life for the main character.  Almost every scene in More was done in gray scale which added to the dreary feel.  Without color there is no variation in life, it gives the sense everything is exactly the same.
More is the perfect representation of the average worker. They go to work then return home to sleep only to wake he next morning to the same exact routine the following day with no chance of escaping the cycle except by being promoted.  That’s what the main character in More did.  The main character wanted to return to the simpler days of childhood when life was easier and there was fun to be had.  The character used this to draw upon inspiration to create the new product Bliss.  Bliss was supposed to make everyone happy for, like our world, the main character lives in a very materialistic society.  This reminds me of the line from The Incredibles said by Dash, “If everyone is special no one is.”
The scenes which stood out to me most were the opening and closing showing the kids playing.  At first the kids shown are gray and then the kids shown at the end are in color.  I believe this shows that one can always find hope in the darkest of places.  As long as you never give up you’ll eventually find what you’re searching for.
I think Madame Tudli Pudli was a very fascinating short film to watch.  I believe that everything that happened was in her mind.  I have heard people say “train of thought” many times and I believe that’s something that trains tend to represent in movies, books, and even video games.  For example the train in Inception, the train in The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl, and the train in the video game Alice: Madness Returns.   In all of these the train represented the thought process of the main character.
The train represents the woman’s mind.  All the baggage she is bringing with her represents useless thoughts she no longer needs that she’s bringing along with her as a major change occurs in her life.  Among the items seen there is a record player, lanterns, and an open bird cage with no bird.  There are so many she can’t hold them all.   When she boards the train she’s sitting with a child whose reading How to Handle Your Enemies, an older man who’s sleeping, and a middle aged perverted man.  Each of them represents a different side of her.  The sleeping old man may represent her lethargic side, the older man represents her “looser” side, and the child represents her own childish side.
At one point the lady is gassed and put to sleep.  When she comes to the three of them are gone and so is all of her luggage.  It is not clear as to what happened to the three people however I believe they were killed.  If the excess baggage in her mind and the parts of her mind that she does not need disappeared then she would be able to clear her mind and move on with her life.  When she finally comes to terms with what happened she sees a light at the end of the hallway.  This means she came to terms with what had happened.  This is shown by her transformation into a moth.
What I found most amazing about this short was that real eyes were used for the puppet.  This made it come to life.  The puppet’s emotions were far more lifelike than anything I had expected or seen.

The two videos we went on a journey of weirdness watching left me with a sense of, well, a sense. A feeling that was indescribable then, and remains so now. So, this post is going to have more questions than answers. Enjoy.

Mark Osborne’s “MORE” is a color-heavy metaphor for happiness and creativity and where one truly finds it. (Hint: Check his stomach box-thing. It’s very Tellytubby-ish?) The use of color throughout the piece is what captivated me first and foremost: from the spectral, orange glow of our protagonist’s vision, to the overabundance of gray everywhere, to the rainbow vomit-like HAPPY state of mind, and finally to the colorful “children” laughing and playing in a far-off corner of this gray world. I’m a fairly big believer in the use of color as a means to convey emotion, but Osborne appears to be taking that use in a strange direction.

Literally my face watching “MORE.”

The vision of happy, playful children when we see into the mind of “Blobert,” as I’ve decided to call him, should give us the impression that this is a goal for Blobert: to restore this happiness to the world. It’s supposed to be a good vision, even possibly a desire to restore the past happiness to the present bleakness. But then there’s that orange glow. When I first saw the film, I began to think that scene represented ghosts, or something of a spiritual, spooky nature. The laughter seemed chilling, not warming, all because of that glow. It’s a warning? Does the orange mean caution? Who’s being cautioned and why are they being warned about these creepy orange-gray blob people?

Then you have this gray city, with gray people and gray skies and gray buildings and gray gray in all shades of gray. Maybe about fifty of them? Fifty shades of gray?  I’m going to stop right here this isn’t funny or relevant at all. Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that upon viewing the short film for a second, third, and fourth time, my thoughts immediately went to the use of color and the unusual questions they posed in the face of a fairly straightforward plot.

And now we come to Madame Tutli-Putli, a cinematic enigma by Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski, filled with puppetry and human eyes.

Here, Madame Tutli-Putli plays coy with a male suitor. Such a charming scene.

What impressed me most about this short film was that in the four years it took to create the seventeen minutes of footage… I understood next to nothing. Or rather I understood, but can’t explain. In a way I felt like I was on that train ride with the Madame, and that when she cried, I cried too. No, really, the moment the film ended I felt this uncontrollable desire to just bawl senselessly. The more I think about what this film is trying to say through metaphorical journeys and an abundance of imagery, the more questions and possibilities I think of, none of which I can fully elaborate upon. It’s an overstimulation of sorts: escape, mind games, gross seduction, murder, kidnapping, mysterious sleeping gas, chasing after a magical butterfly… It can mean so much, but it’s too much to take in at once.

Understandable? Not really. Interesting? Completely.

More, a short film about a lonely inventor, takes the viewer on a grim journey through the colorless world. Mark Osborne does this by using stop motion animation along with eerie music to captivate his viewer’s imagination. This eerie music coalesces with the colorless world to create a sad atmosphere. This sadness is palpable throughout the short film.  The lack of dialogue further instills sadness in the viewer. Claymation serves to further enhance the visual effects and make the characters more grim. During the day the inventor leads a boring life of toiling on the factory line while being yelled at by his boss. He reminisces about his blissful childhood and hopes one day he will be able to create an invention that makes his life more enjoyable. Once the inventor finally makes his dream come true, he becomes known as the the greatest inventor of all time. His new product called Bliss fills the store shelves and he becomes very successful. But his success comes at a great cost because it changes him. The inventor realizes happiness cannot be invented.

The mysterious short film, Madame Tutli-Putli, takes the viewer on suspenseful train ride. Chris Lavis and Maciek Szczerbowski do something for the first time in film history. They incorporate live human eyes into their masterpiece. These human eyes play a significant role in the development of Madame Tutli-Putli. At the beginning, she is beautiful and has young looking eyes. As the movie progresses, she becomes worn down and you can see her beauty fading as bags appear under her eyes. The animation for this film is almost life like. This serves to incorporate the human element into the film and allows the viewer to feel for Madame Tutli-Putli. We feel for Madame Tutli-Putli when we see her at the beginning of the film cluttered with heavy luggage. The short film has some gruesome scenes like when a man is gets his kidney stolen by organ harvesters or when noxious green gas pours from the vents. But these gruesome scenes serve a special purpose. These scenes transform Madame Tutli-Putli into a completely different person. She is carefree and is not afraid like she was at the beginning of the film. The auditory effects further enhance the film and create suspense. The music keeps the viewer on his or her toes, and the music prevents the film from being completely silent. The sound effects instill empathy in the viewer like when the viewer hears the shudder of Madame Tutli-Putli falling to the ground. There is hope at the end for Madame Tutli-Putli as she escapes the robbers, the noxious green gas, and the dangerous train ride.

Image Source: https://files.eportfolios.macaulay.cuny.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/3239/2012/09/15221309/more-picture-300×164.png

 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. (?)

At first, I wasn’t really such a fan of short films overall. Because they are so short, with no voices, and just simply so short, I thought I couldn’t find any meaning or expression in them. I like reading books or seeing movies where I can get a grander idea of the character, and understand the character’s personality and motives. But these two films, MORE, and Madame Tutli Putli, were different – they were new – and they changed my view. I enjoyed them.

The film MORE was so intriguing and to understand it clearly you really need to see it a few times, and continue going over it and exploring it. This picture displays the main character – looking at it you can see the dilemma he faces – one of hopelessness, a life, a career, that seems to have gone to waste. Although there are no voices or dialogue, which is something that at first made me resent these movies, as I began to dissect the imagery, I realized the movies are actually quite powerful. In MORE, the audience goes on a journey with the protagonist. We see how he works so hard to create his revolutionary breakthrough, and then how he realizes he has become just another great tyrant, and through the director’s dry colors, somber music, gray images, and tone, we feel the great loss and depression, we become a part of the story. We see ourselves, we think about our own lives, what makes us happy, what are the colorless tones and shadows and images in our lives. What is our true secret to happiness.

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I didn’t realize at first that the eyes were real – but then when Professor Davis told us the eyes were real, it gave the film more meaning. I think it’s a really interesting choice that the director put in human eyes – it gives the character a more lifelike disposition, and the entire film a more real edge. This reflects the entire real-life side of the film, how the train was breathing, which personified the train, and then the train sped up so quickly, as if running away from the reality of the situation. The entire film seemed to be alive, and the viewer could see himself in that same situation, the idea of running away from one’s life. I think this film begs the reader to imagine himself in Madame Tutli Putli’s position. What would we do if we were on that train, wearing that hat, carrying her luggage? What have we done in our predicaments, our own positions in life?

In each of these films, rather than looking for a purpose they conveyed, I found myself imagining myself, seeing myself, in those same situations. I could see the overpowering boss in my life, the “happy products,” the harrassing man, the confining train, and the butterflies in my life. These films came alive to me in a way I didn’t think I would ever relate to short films. They were really interesting, and this post doesn’t even do them half the justice they deserve.

At first glance, More seems like a depressing film, yet viewers come out with a life lesson. I watched as the inventor looked out onto the city with wistful, longing eyes, and the only ray of light he sees zooms into children playing together. It seems that he’s nostalgic for his past, his childhood, and that’s the only light he can see in his black-and-white world. I think it’s a sad reality of many people in society who look for happiness elsewhere, outside, when in fact, happiness is something that people must create for themselves with what they have,  inside. The inventor is not happy with the way his life is but he looks to the wrong places to find happiness. He tries to manufacture happiness in a “Happy Product” but ultimately learns that it’s impossible; happiness cannot be bought, with even an infinite amount of money.

Maddame Tutli Putli (Photo Credit below)

As I was watching the film Maddame Tutli Putli, I thought the character was dreaming, or more accurately, having a nightmare, and that she’d wake up at the end. I realized that it’s not a dream though. All the while that she’s on the train she acts very cautiously and warily, as if trying to confront the evil that might get to her first. Her eyes are full of emotion and display her feelings  in a very life-like manner. It seems like she’s running away from something big, perhaps her former life and the different traumatic aspects of it. Her journey on the train is symbolic of her journey to her new life. The many suitcases she carries resemble the heavy burden she bears, with the stresses and the troubles from her past. She is trying to leave her past but the memories keep coming back and plaguing her. The viewer travels the adventure with her.

In More and Maddame Tutli Putli, both characters refer back to former times during their life. However, there are opposite reasons in each. In More, the inventor looks back longingly at his past, with a desire to go back to it. In Maddame Tutli Putli, the character tries to avoid her past and run away from it.

(Photo Credit: http://tiff.net/blogs/archivedimages/Canadian%20Film
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The short film “More” is about an older man who struggles all his life to find the secret to the happiness of his youth. But he doesn’t realize that when he was younger, he wasn’t happy because of things can be bought. The reason he was laughing and carefree in that memory was because he was having fun, with his friends, outdoors. The whole time the man thinks that he can buy or create something that will bring the “light” back into his life…but really the light is inside himself! There is no external source for it. But when the man forgets this, and places all his hopes in one invention that he thinks will solve all his problems, he is left with nothing else to derive happiness from. His invention isn’t successful in causing real, lasting joy, and he he has no idea left of how to be truly happy.
Even though the world of “More” is gray, it’s hopeful to note that the people still have “light” (i.e. hopes and dreams) inside of themselves. No matter how heartless and cold the world may seem, it’s up to us to choose how to perceive life. The children at the end of the film are just as truly happy as the man had remembered. This happiness is especially noticeable in children because it is often when we are young, before we need to worry about money, that we’re happy with just feeling loved and secure. Whenever we feel down and unhappy, we need to ask ourselves if we’ve placed too much hope in our “Bliss Glasses” and if we can remember what we used to derive joy from, before those “Bliss Glasses” were even invented. Because this is such a universal message, it’s interesting to note that “More” doesn’t identify a particular nation for its setting and that the characters themselves aren’t very gender-specific. This is because the world of “More” isn’t about a person or a place. It’s about a frame of mind.

The voyage of Madame Tutli-Putli also takes place within the mind, but this time it’s specifically her mind which is being explored. At the beginning of the film, Madame Tutli-Putli, the only woman shown throughout, is trying to escape the men who have treated her badly. She is bogged down with all the baggage from her experiences and memories. When the butterfly (a symbol of feeling light and free) first flutters in front of her, she impatiently waves it away, unable to believe that she will ever be able to unburden herself. Once she is on the train (beginning her voyage to actualizing her inner strength), we see that her baggage is related to her dealings with men because her bags literally contain men (the ones playing chess). The game being played mirrors Madame Tutli-Putli’s inner struggle to figure out an escape strategy. She then turns to the ugly little boy (an ugly thought within her), which urges her to take action, to “handle her enemies”, and and stop running from those who have hurt her. Finally, she is faced with a dilemma…the man who harasses her on the train. Does she stand up to those who have stepped on her for so long, thereby freeing herself of all her baggage, or does she continue to be taken advantage of?
Throughout the film, Madame Tutli-Putli gets uglier and uglier, as she is forced to face this ugly part of herself that is leading her to kill a man. While the reason she does it is to stop feeling victimized, she is still a murderer. She is the one who kills him, though it feels like there is a force overtaking her that she cannot fight against (represented by the green gas). Before she is overtaken by this murderous side of herself, the side struggling to finally be strong against her oppressors, Madame Tutli-Putli sees the butterfly again. But this time she is encouraged by its symbolism and devises the only way she can think of to finally feel free.
After she kills the man, we see that the train hits a moose – an innocent bystander. This is because Madame Tutli-Putli’s journey towards freeing herself has led her to kill an innocent man. Though he is disgusting, he is not the one who has caused all her built-up pain and suffering. He is only a representation of all that she has endured. Afterwards, the voices in her head telling her how to free herself (the men playing chess and the boy reading) disappear along with her baggage. And she herself feels free and light, ultimately becoming one with the butterfly, which was a symbol throughout. But she has made herself ugly in the process, and her hands and shoes remained stained. Though she feels free and empowered for the moment, she has had to turn herself into something repulsive to do it and she can never free herself from the guilt of her murder. She is forced to carry around the burden of killing an innocent man (represented by a part of him that she takes – his liver) forever.

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There is no greater fear than becoming something you swore to fight against. But that is the unfortunate reality for Mark Osborne’s claymation figure in More. At first I didn’t understand why they showed the children playing when the main story became centered in the depressed worker who has a dream to create something better than “Happy.” He used his own spirit to power his dream machine which he called “Bliss.” By using his spirit and putting it into his invention, he eventually loses his spirit even though he accomplished his dream. He became his own boss and the boss he hated for so long as a factory worker. He only realizes that he lost himself when he sees young colorful children playing. The color they have represent hope for the future of this dark and grey life where the cycle of despair continues, which makes him happy and hopeful. Even with the great “Bliss” there are still oppressed and depressed people such as the main character’s own factory workers. He lost sight of his true goal of creating a better life and instead brought about a fake version of “Bliss.” Now he can only hope that someone else will have a better dream and help everyone better than he did.

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But Madame Tutli Putli is an extra weird short film. I first thought it was a comedy, the scene with the train riders in Madame Tutli Putli’s cart was hilarious, with the future North Korean leader child and the two guys in the suitcases playing chess with the train making every move and the creepy pervert tennis superstar sitting across from her. But then the film took an eerie turn. First of all the train was breathing, like it was representing some living entity, probably the madame. Then when the creepy organ stealers came on the train and began to take people’s organs I thought I was watching some black market organ business at work. The train began to ride extremely fast, as if running away from this grim reality that the madame just witnessed, which is what she began to do when she woke up. She was the moth that was stuck in the light. She was running away the same way the moth was flying around in the beginning and then she became trapped in the train the same way the moth was trapped in the light if the train. She couldn’t escape, instead she went from being trapped in one place to being trapped in another. It seems there was no running away from her past.