(United Kingdom 1998 11min)
Director Ruth Lingford; Writer Sarah Maitland; Music Andy Cowton; Voice Acting Pablo Duarte, Mildred Lee, Corinne Strickett
by Stephen Russell-Gebbett
Although animation, colourful and free, is most attractive to young eyes it plays host to all subjects and all audiences.
There are many animators who take advantage of the association of animation with children or childlike things with disingenuous mischief. They daub their macabre designs across the page as a challenge to our preconceptions. Ruth Lingford’s Pleasures of War is a refreshing balm to these types of stunts. It is a serious work that uses rather than abuses its medium.
It comes as a great surprise that this tale of lust and a lust for war, of death and the little death, in stark black and white with strong shapes of heady primary colour, was drawn on an everyday desktop computer. Can something as potent as this have been made with tools that seem cold and detached from the artist? Absolutely.
Pleasures of War is based on the (apocryphal) Biblical story of Judith and Holofernes. Holofernes was an invading general whose forces were defeated by Judith, who seduced him and beheaded whilst in the throes of passion. As such Judith has been taken up in some quarters as an icon of aggressive, emboldened femininity, uninhibited sexually and traditionally masculine in her violent determination. She has featured in works by Gustav Klimt, Goya, Caravaggio and Michelangelo depicted with a sword in her hand and, oftentimes, a grin on her lips.
The magnetism of the tale, the fluid nature of death and sex, runs rampant in Pleasures of War. But there is more than fervour in the clanking, clashing music and the magnificent visual sense. Horror, in a boy’s wounded voice-over (“they promised us milk but there is blood in our mouths”) and suffering in ghostly footage of real wars overlaid as if erupting through its fictional skin. The compositions are fabulous. Plangent faces, melting liquid desires within dry geometric shapes, yellow standards and red arrowtips, holocausts and hollow abysses of nothingness. Judith flings a yellow cloak over her shoulders in whose folds are seen massed ranks of (almost certainly) Jews. She takes it all on her shoulders and drinks in her duty to all victims, turning yellow herself in the process.
Judith
The title, Pleasures of War, is both ironic and utterly straight. The consummation brings joy through the death of oppression. There is much pain to be overcome and much perverse pleasure in its dissolution. The conquest, in fact, leaves us with less than we had before. Freer, but not quite as alive. Though Judith thrusts Holofernes’ severed head into the sky to a tumultuous sound, a red pall blots onto the screen and those same huddled crowds are seen within. She does it for all the oppressed and the persecuted but the battle is never won.
Is this what it means to be human? Death and Sex. On repeat.
The film opens with a wheel rolling across the screen (whose rim is made of emaciated, naked bodies) and ends with another wheel. War is a cycle and the tale at the heart of Pleasures of War is another milestone on the road.
Why do children like cartoons so much? Is it the impossibilities, the colour, the exciting differences to real life, the distortions of time and space? Does it speak directly to their imagination? Ruth Lingford’s Pleasures of War speaks directly to ours. The camera stalks down corridors and circles its characters, searching for the light and getting lost in the shadows. It injects itself into our minds with all the force of centuries of intense, fiery rapture.
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Powerful, foreboding and altogether mesmerizing work, that uses splashes of color and shapes to create a distinct mood and sense of urgency. It’s avante-garde in its execution, and bears more than a striking resemblance to the paper cut-out and wood cuts of children’s picture book animation. I am truly dazzled and would like to know if this is included in any animation compilation.
You continute to up the ante by leaving the box to examinine this far-reaching form from every possible angle, and I applaud you.
My reply is below, Sam.
I concur with Sammy on the praise for this, one of the most striking animated films on a count with so many striking films.
Funny, I would love to see a Shakespeare drama, perhaps Richard III or Lear, done in this style of animation. I don’t know why, but I just felt that this look and style would truly do the immortal Bard proud…
Funny what goes through a person’s head when art is involved.
This was a great selection Stephen…
Thank you, Dennis.
That’s a great call re Shakespeare. I’m thinking HAMLET or MACBETH myself. It’s dark, claustrophobic and carnal. Those plays require subterranean spaces in which furies and passions are born, concealed and unleashed.
Just type in “Shakespeare animation” on google and you’ll see tons of links. The question remains if any of these are worthy to the scope of this countdown.
Great, harrowing choice.
I haven’t come across any top quality animation of Shakespeare – though there was a British series some years ago – and it needs to be top quality to do the plays justice.
Thanks very much, Sam.
“…would like to know if this is included in any animation compilation.”
It’s on “Best of British Animation Awards Volume 3”. It’s listed on Amazon but currently out of stock. You can purchase it from
http://www.britishanimationawards.com/dvd.html
They all look to be interesting compilations but I doubt they are of the consistent quality of the “Masters of Russian Animation” DVDs.
Again, wow Stephen. Another great selection, coupled with some of your most passionate paragraphs (You clearly love this short and it’s evident in a good way).
Love the subject matter and execution of this film, having the Disney and Pixar stuff so low (to not even present) is becoming quite understood now.
I’d quibble with the one sentence about computers being instinctively cold in the artistic process (is a cold mound of clay, or a slab of marble, or a blank stretched canvas any more inviting or warm?), but that’s quite a small quibble. Again nice work.
Thank you very much.
Some films do connect with me in a stronger way, spilling over into the style of writing (almost as if they are writing their own review).
“I’d quibble with the one sentence about computers being instinctively cold in the artistic process (is a cold mound of clay, or a slab of marble, or a blank stretched canvas any more inviting or warm?)”
You’re right. I should have made a distinction between the result I believe computerised animation usually achieves and what it can achieve.
Oh, I was chiefly looking at it as the computer as a mode or tool for artistic expression. If your point was the end look it produces (more often then not) in animation, then I’d agree with you quite a bit.
Don’t know if I liked it, but I liked how it looked.
It’s a start, Jaime!