Dana reviews the new Ralph Bakshi movie, released today.
Last Days of Coney
Island displays the shadowed world of a once-thriving entertainment area
made famous during the early part of the Twentieth Century in a twisted
tilt-o-whirl metaphor for the ride which makes us all sick – the ride of broken
dreams and shifting loyalties, the ride of life. Ralph Bakshi, master of the
coarse urban animated character anthology, announced his intent to create his
latest short-film project back in 2006. It would take years of production hell,
and a fan-funded Kickstarter campaign, to bring the film to life. Animated by
hand, as has been all of Bakshi’s best work, with digital touch-up rendering to
smooth out the finished product while still retaining the grit and integrity of
its most human elements, Last Days
feels like a return to 1973’s Heavy
Traffic.
There is a strange dichotomy present from the very
beginning, from older grained filmstrip to the digitally rendered animation. The
violence inherent in Bakshi’s work is as brutal as it has ever been, in chalk
strokes as fierce as any slashed across a storyboard during the 1970s. Last Days is as much a reverie as it is
a storyboard. Amongst the entrails and distorted viciousness, there is a hidden
sweetness……a lighter side to these caricatures, which leads us to the genuine
purpose for all the seemingly senseless carnage.
For much of the film, we are treated to what appears to
be an animatic – a schema which doesn’t tell the entire story. But looking
deeper within, we see that Bakshi has provided a fully-functional buffet: the
blood-spattered beyond has a story to tell us. And, in fact, it almost feels as
though we are caught up in the animatic schema for Heavy Traffic – until the psychedelic landscapes begin to pay off,
and we are caught up in Bakshi’s psychedelic, 1960s spin. It is through this
filter that we come to know the characters, and, perhaps, Bakshi himself.
There is a distinct difference between the roughly drawn
characterizations evident in Bakshi’s earlier work; the digital touch-up work
in Last Days of Coney Island is
evident, and stands out like a sharply-lined schematic amongst the rough-shod
characters. In fact, for those
unfamiliar with Bakshi and his caricatured cast of wonders, it would be
difficult to follow the action. It is the animation, above all else, which
brings this film home. Bakshi’s sensibilities, which run through the palette of
animated expectation, are what truly bring this piece to life. For those who
are unused to Ralph Bakshi’s line-drawn, heartfelt connection to these
characters, the storyline would seem a lost cause. But the art direction brings
the characters back from the edge of oblivion just in time – Last Days of Coney Island brings to life
a hopeless, ugly Brooklyn of the 1960s illustrated like the comic-book doodles
of a middle schooler, as devoid of anticipation as the face of its
protagonists, as lush and colorful as its hopes and dreams.
We know everything is fake, and the characters do, too –
but perhaps, it is within this very artifice that they – and we – find our
artifice justified; there is a reason we wear the masks, and these characters,
who have seen and lived it all – have, too. There is a point at which the
stories become reality, and we must face the interconnected tales we have
ignored thus far. In a sad, faraway caricatured way, the characters of Last Days face up to these realities; in
a colorful chalkboard of dissonant choruses – they recognize that they play a
specific role, but are unwilling to give up the masks.
And it is strange, because in many ways it feels like the
ghosts of Heavy Traffic, come back to
life to tell us a cautionary tale about the times in which we live. But they
are not the same characters, and their message doesn’t quite resonate, at
first. By the end, it is difficult for those of us who have known and loved
Bakshi’s work for so many years to decipher whether a message has even been
delivered at all. But, above all, I believe that what Bakshi stands for is the
reflection within the negatives…..a strange dichotomy between the lesson and
the punishment. For, without one, the other ceases to truly hold any power. And
in a seemingly-simple, 22 minute film, a lot can truly be said.
Nothing has truly changed between the 1960s squalor of Last Days of Coney Island and the sleek,
smooth animation of today. The only real difference resides within the people
who seek the keyholes, the people who know where the real shifts between
reality and possibility lie. It is the artists – like Bakshi, like his cohorts
– which reach out for the truth. We are pieces of the whole story, and until
there comes a time when the synopsis can tell the complete narrative, we are
stuck between what is said and what is sewn, the digital and the analogue, the
unexceptional and the definitive.
Score:
-Dana Culling
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