Around the time Pixar was making new classics likeThe Incredibles,Ratatouille, andWALL-E, something awfully annoying started happening. More than a few think pieces started coming out about how the mighty animation house was outpacing most big studios in sheer storytelling prowess. In a way, the writers of these pieces were dead on.WALL-Eshowed a more nuanced and ironclad understanding of physical comedy than arguably any movie in the aughts.The Incrediblesstill embarrasses every single movie based on a DC or Marvel property in formal cohesion and emotional resonance. With the exception ofBig Night,has any movie about cooking and artistic passion felt so imbued with extensive, hard-won experience asRatatouille?
The accolades were well deserved, but the fervor stirred up over these movies also touched on a certain, ongoing strain of shallow American exceptionalism. Much like every idiot who says that movies aren’t as good as they used to be is clearly not paying attention to 98% of foreign films, the embrace of Pixar seemed to suggest an ignorance of a long line of underground and foreign animated movies. Pixar’s CEOJohn Lasseterhas an open obsession and affinity forHayao Miyazakiand Studio Ghibli, the production house behindMy Neighbor TotoroandPrincess Mononoke, but beyond Miyazaki’s influential work, Ghibli’s output has been relegated to cult status. Clearly, those who saw a revolution in anything but strictly American animation in Pixar had missedOnly Yesterday,Grave of the Fireflies, orThe Triplets of Belleville, amongst a host of other gems.
Part of the issue is that these movies are bleak, more suited for adults in substance than anxious children. Pixar’s ingenuity was in not condescending to children, to treat the audience as attentive, intelligent, and empathetic. Even today, that’s a big deal. When compared to something as thunderously political and visually astounding asWaltz with Bashir, however, Pixar’s triumphs stopped at the water’s edge, rarely even grazing the sublime and the metaphysical. Their movies remain joyous, rewarding, and often hilarious. Still, one wonders what would happen if they took the plunge and made a movie strictly for adults, or adapted something so seemingly impossible to calibrate in live-action asGeek Loveor, until recently,Neil Gaiman’sAmerican Gods.
The times are a changing, though. For one, Adult Swim exists. More pointedly, bracingly explicit animated series likeRick and Mortyand the unparalleledBoJack Horsemanhave dedicated, impassioned fan-bases that span all ages, andSeth RogenandEvan Goldberg’sSausage Partylooks to be doing what Pixar never deigned to do, even if it’s tied to a lot of dick jokes and enough curse words to makeGeorge Carlinblush. Not surprisingly, this year saw ecstatic audiences packing in for revival theatrical releases forOnly Yesterdayand the uncannyBelladonna of Sadness. Both of those films appear on the list of the best adult-oriented animated films below, which I took up in honor ofSausage Party’s release later this week. If ever there were a reason to spend some money on Amazon Prime or iTunes, these wild wonders of boundless imagination would fit the criteria nicely.
A quick note: more than a few of these films could be construed as being made with children in mind. They very well might have been. My thinking here is to single out films that reach beyond the simple yet still stunning wonder of the animated image to touch on thematic concerns that only adults can fully appreciate. In other words, your kids might love these movies, but they won’t fully understand the depth of their existential, societal, and political meaning.
‘Waltz with Bashir’
Even on this list,Waltz with Bashirstands out. Released in 2008 to wild acclaim,Waltz with Bashir, along with another entry on this list,$9.99, was the first Israeli animated film in over 45 years to secure stateside release or, really, release at all. It’s not surprising that the one place where the film was expressly banned was Lebanon. The film’s writer-directorAri Folman, is a veteran of the Lebanon War, and the film recounts both his memories of those days and his present-day conversations with the men who lived through it with him. Here, the animated form offers a distancing mechanism, a way of conveying the slippery, unreliable nature of memory. There’s a pickled humor to the documentary-like interactions, and the flashbacks are boldly colorful, enthrallingly experiential, and wildly creative. It’s a wonder to behold, but the film hits like a sledgehammer, depicting not just the melancholy of age and fading remembrances but the horrors of war, as much for the dead as for the survivors.
‘Grave of the Fireflies’
There are certain movies you just don’t want to talk about. Some, like, say,A Serbian Film, just shouldn’t be discussed in mixed company; other are directed byMichael Hanekeand just zap all the hope out of your body.Grave of the Fireflies, though not without its sense of inventive wonder, belongs in the latter camp. Directed by longtime Studio Ghibli heavyweightIsao Takahata, whose own family bore the horrors of the USA’s bombing of Japan in World War II, the film focuses on a young girl and her older brother left orphaned after the hellfire of the first round of bombings. To explain just how they get along in a decimated world, and where they end up, is too much for me to bear right now, frankly, but needless to say, this gorgeous, devastating work sinks down into your stomach like too much of a bad meal. Takahata sees war as true hell, one where even innocent children’s deaths are ignorable for the glory, pride, and idealism of a nation. The director doesn’t ignore Japan’s own hand in the war - it’s right out front, in fact - but blaming one nation is besides the point. Everyone is guilty for what happens to these children, because everyone, even those who protest it, is implicit in the endless pain and unexpected consequences of war.
‘Mary & Max’
The stop-motion-animatedMary & Maxbelongs in the same camp of daunting yet tremendously rewarding works asGrave of the Fireflies. It should come as a surprise, then, that the film is actually about a friendship. Over the years, letters are sent between the young girl who becomes a lonely woman, voiced byToni Colette, and the severely depressed Jewish city-dweller of the title. The world is not easy on either of them. Domestic and emotional abuse are rampant, everyday horrors visit them and their loved ones often, and their minute hopes are often dashed right at the moment when their luck seems to be changing. The gorgeous use of black, white, and grey in the surroundings and characters underlines a certain overriding pessimism. And that seems to be the point. Where so many films simply ask you to believe in the power of friendship because of a good deed or acting like a human,Mary & Maxconsiders even the faintest connection reason enough to push along in life. That the late, inimitablePhilip Seymour Hoffmanvoices Max with delicate yet robustly humorous panache is at once fitting and something of a cruel joke when all is said and done.
The work of Israeli writerEtgar Keretis, like Murakami, not easily depicted on the big screen. It’s too wrapped up in symbology and transcendentalism, too nuanced in its attention to history, tradition, and national mythology. And yet, when he paired with writer-directorTatiana Rosenthalon$9.99, something akin to a perfect reflection of his work arose. Keret deals largely in short stories, and$9.99, an Australian-Israeli co-production, plays like a swirl of stories from a parallel universe where physics and reason have gone to cloud cuckoo land. A surly angel, voiced byGeoffrey Rush, strikes up a friendship with an old man; an unemployed, existential twenty-something searches for the meaning of life; a man changes his very genetic make-up to please the woman he falls for; and a heartbroken loner suddenly befriends a bunch of hard-drinking collegiate men who are two-inches tall each. Each storyline has its own good-humored yet barbed details of a life lived under the mystery of existence. The ultimate fascination that drives the film, however, is the odd and oddly optimistic joy that Keret and Rosenthal find in the unlikely ways people find meaning and hope in life, whether its “true” or not.
‘Fantastic Mr. Fox’
You could watchWes Anderson’s stop-motion masterwork 35 times, as I have, and still find a plethora of details strewn throughout the meticulously crafted landscape. On those merits alone,Fantastic Mr. Foxwould qualify as the bestRoald Dahladaptation in existence, and yes, I’m countingWilly Wonka and the Chocolate Factory- nostalgia be damned. WithGeorge Clooneyvoicing the titular family-man-cum-charming-thief, the film brings up a classical dichotomy – man’s tendency to be both a civilized member of society and, well, an animal.BoJack Horsemanbelongs in this company, but it’s not nearly as emotionally resonant. It’s also not nearly as funny, which is saying something. Fox trades the loving embrace and responsibility of his family, voiced byMeryl StreepandJason Schwartzman, for the accolades from a group of local males, voiced by the likes ofBill Murray,Wallace Wolodarsky,Adrien Brody, andEric Chase Anderson. This comes to a head when he takes on a pack of mean, manipulative barons of local industry, but its roots are in the balance of art and existence. Fox needs to be a showman but also a loving, calm father and husband, much like art must at once be visually astounding and honest to its core, even when your heroes are foxes, field mice, and badgers.
‘South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncut’
In hindsight,South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncuthighlighted a major turn inTrey ParkerandMatt Stone’s art, and yes, I said art. The seasons ofSouth Parkthat followed the 1999 release of this miraculous comedy were sharper and more merciless in their humor and their politics. The film, which finds the mighty quartet of Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny trying to stop an international incident between America and Canada over curse words, isn’t timely but rather timeless in its unrelenting criticism of censorship. Like all great comedies,South Park: Bigger, Longer, and Uncutlooks at repression as the ultimate villain of an orderly and free society, and the reason that society grows more debauched with every passing year. For all the force that goes into the complaints, petitions, and moronic “movements” against bad language in rap music or sex in movies, there will inevitably be a push back, if only in total giddy defiance. Parker and Stone seem happy to be the harbingers of that retaliation, and with this movie, they dropped the proverbial hydrogen bomb on conservative America.
‘The Haunted World of El Superbeasto’
Known primarily as the patron saint of modern horror,Rob Zombiealso took time out of his busy head-banging schedule to direct this wildly perverse, ecstatically entertaining trip through horny hell. The titular character is a luchador-superhero-ladies-man, voiced byTom Papa, who pairs up with his sister, spy-stripper Suzy X, to take down the nefarious Dr. Satan, voiced with giddy delight byPaul Giamatti, who is involved with everything from Nazi zombies to killer robots. High art, this is not, but in the same defiant spirit asSausage Party, the film suggests a debauched world that’s just as joyous as the wholesome cartoons that are churned out for the kid-folk, without any guilt, moralizing, or half-cocked philosophical musings to weigh it down.
‘A Scanner Darkly’
Philip K. Dickis not easy to adapt. I loveBlade Runnerand all, but that movie doesn’t really reflect the sardonic, wild perspective of the godfather of modern science fiction.Blade Runneris a greatRidley Scottmovie and that’s it.A Scanner Darklyis a greatRichard Linklaterfilm – the director has quite a lot of those – and a great Dick adaptation. One could pick at the wondrous, melancholic passages of Dick’s book that were weeded out of the adaptation, but that seems petty in this case. Linklater’s handling of a world where cops can look like anyone and no one, and drugs have become even more rampant and unstable as, is sublimely thoughtful in form and narrative. The rotoscoped animation not only gives the film the colorful vision of a grade-A high but also underlines the struggle with identity thatKeanu Reeves’ undercover cop is butting up against. Much like an actor meant to serve as something of a blue-print for digital artists, Reeves’ on-the-brink policeman can’t quite tell if he’s himself or someone else anymore and his struggle is potently conveyed. Linklater goes one step further be showing the group of junkies that Reeves’ characters pals around with, includingRory CochraneandRobert Downey Jr., are far more entertaining and accepting than the cops in the precinct and the job that’s tied to them. The escape he finds in drugs and acting like someone else is as much a fault of his own weakness as it is the world’s need for order and uniformity.
