I have lived in the Santa Cruz mountains of Northern California for almost nine years.
The mountains are a strange place. They draw you in and somehow change you. When you look the first time, you kinda see it, but like the proverbial frog in the proverbial pot, you sink in as it gets weirder around you. All that may be why I became so engrossed by Hundreds of Beavers, arguably the single-most avant garde feature I've seen in years.
The premise is this: an applejack salesman, Jean Kayak (played by the amazing and long-named Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), sees his entire operation blow-up, and thus he is set to a new path, becoming a fur trapper. He takes on the creatures of the forest in a life-or-death battle, and sets about fulfilling a quest, Well, a couple of quests. It's very much structured like a video game, complete with side-quests and map-cuts. This is a structure that a lot of science fiction and fantasy films have taken in recent years, but this doesn't seem to play in those fields at the same time as being exactly in that space.
And in that realm lies its brilliance.
The look of the film is black-and-white, high-contrast/concept. The work they did with backgrounds is amazing, and it turns the film into a wonderland. Immediately I came to the sensation of Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World, or even more closely, Night Mayor. It's not just the black-and-white, but the use of the contrast to bring us in to a place that is either charming or disquieting, usually in equal measure. The setting's non-reality is key to the marvel of the film because it plays in a universe that is almost exactly the same as Bugs Bunny and his ilk inhabit.
The lack of almost any dialogue ramps it up, especially when we get the sound of blubbering tears or screams. The atmospheric sound seems a natural encounter, and the breaking of it to be a transgresion. This ties it to the silents in a much more real way than The Artist managed. They both feel like silent films, but here, they're working with the idea and tropes and when they do give us intentional words/utterances, they mean something. The sound design is so smart, minimalist, full of nuance, but precise.
The action is both surreal and comical, like in Looney Toons. The way everything is presented is with a sense that Jean is unbreakable, an unkillable machine bent on taking out his terrible fur-covered foes, but he is surrounded by death... or at least the kind of death that is represented by 'X's across the eyes and drag-marks across the snow. Here, we are given a slapstick reality that plays in the unreal as much as a Mario Bros. game, but the stakes are actually there.
In Hundreds of Beavers, we get little things that add up. A great bit of physical acting, when Jean nearly goes eye-first into a stump that has been beaver-gnawed into a stake-like death device, is just one of dozens of Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton-worthy pieces of physical comedy. The cinematography amps everything up, and there are times I'm biting my nails like I would watching Safety Last at The Stanford.
The fun bit is that every animal is a giant, fur-suited human. This is the closest it ties to the cartoon world. They're big, and they have so many human attributes that play off that size. This makes Jean's hunt for beaver into a great big comedy treasure hunt that finds more and more with every turn of the spade.
This is one of the finest pieces of truly unique cinema you'll ever see. It builds beautifully, it never pauses too long to let the air out of the audience, nor moves too quickly so that nothing lands. That sweet-spot is something that many films, especially surrealist films, miss.
You might remember a short film I talked about obsessively years ago: ‘Lullaby for Lucious & Sumat’ by Alvin Campana. The connections between the two feel deep: the use of large furry characters, puppetry (and the fish in this one are AWESOME!) the idea that the world is different in ways we both do and don't understand, and most importantly, the way that the setting falls somewhere between Magical Realism and Deep Fantasy, like Dali fighting Borges with Philip K. Dick as the ref.
You really should set aside the time to give Hundreds of Beavers watch. It's one of those viewing experiences that you will absolutely cherish.
You can see Hundreds of Beavers as a part of CineJoy through March 12th.
https://creatics.org/create/cinejoy/showcase/moviepage/267118/Hundreds-of-Beavers
The mountains are a strange place. They draw you in and somehow change you. When you look the first time, you kinda see it, but like the proverbial frog in the proverbial pot, you sink in as it gets weirder around you. All that may be why I became so engrossed by Hundreds of Beavers, arguably the single-most avant garde feature I've seen in years.
The premise is this: an applejack salesman, Jean Kayak (played by the amazing and long-named Ryland Brickson Cole Tews), sees his entire operation blow-up, and thus he is set to a new path, becoming a fur trapper. He takes on the creatures of the forest in a life-or-death battle, and sets about fulfilling a quest, Well, a couple of quests. It's very much structured like a video game, complete with side-quests and map-cuts. This is a structure that a lot of science fiction and fantasy films have taken in recent years, but this doesn't seem to play in those fields at the same time as being exactly in that space.
And in that realm lies its brilliance.
The look of the film is black-and-white, high-contrast/concept. The work they did with backgrounds is amazing, and it turns the film into a wonderland. Immediately I came to the sensation of Guy Maddin's The Saddest Music in the World, or even more closely, Night Mayor. It's not just the black-and-white, but the use of the contrast to bring us in to a place that is either charming or disquieting, usually in equal measure. The setting's non-reality is key to the marvel of the film because it plays in a universe that is almost exactly the same as Bugs Bunny and his ilk inhabit.
The lack of almost any dialogue ramps it up, especially when we get the sound of blubbering tears or screams. The atmospheric sound seems a natural encounter, and the breaking of it to be a transgresion. This ties it to the silents in a much more real way than The Artist managed. They both feel like silent films, but here, they're working with the idea and tropes and when they do give us intentional words/utterances, they mean something. The sound design is so smart, minimalist, full of nuance, but precise.
The action is both surreal and comical, like in Looney Toons. The way everything is presented is with a sense that Jean is unbreakable, an unkillable machine bent on taking out his terrible fur-covered foes, but he is surrounded by death... or at least the kind of death that is represented by 'X's across the eyes and drag-marks across the snow. Here, we are given a slapstick reality that plays in the unreal as much as a Mario Bros. game, but the stakes are actually there.
In Hundreds of Beavers, we get little things that add up. A great bit of physical acting, when Jean nearly goes eye-first into a stump that has been beaver-gnawed into a stake-like death device, is just one of dozens of Harold Lloyd or Buster Keaton-worthy pieces of physical comedy. The cinematography amps everything up, and there are times I'm biting my nails like I would watching Safety Last at The Stanford.
The fun bit is that every animal is a giant, fur-suited human. This is the closest it ties to the cartoon world. They're big, and they have so many human attributes that play off that size. This makes Jean's hunt for beaver into a great big comedy treasure hunt that finds more and more with every turn of the spade.
This is one of the finest pieces of truly unique cinema you'll ever see. It builds beautifully, it never pauses too long to let the air out of the audience, nor moves too quickly so that nothing lands. That sweet-spot is something that many films, especially surrealist films, miss.
You might remember a short film I talked about obsessively years ago: ‘Lullaby for Lucious & Sumat’ by Alvin Campana. The connections between the two feel deep: the use of large furry characters, puppetry (and the fish in this one are AWESOME!) the idea that the world is different in ways we both do and don't understand, and most importantly, the way that the setting falls somewhere between Magical Realism and Deep Fantasy, like Dali fighting Borges with Philip K. Dick as the ref.
You really should set aside the time to give Hundreds of Beavers watch. It's one of those viewing experiences that you will absolutely cherish.
You can see Hundreds of Beavers as a part of CineJoy through March 12th.
https://creatics.org/create/cinejoy/showcase/moviepage/267118/Hundreds-of-Beavers
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