Score: 4
"Sorry, I didn't get it"
date: August 19, 2009
This film is too random to be a proper allegory, and not random enough to qualify for arthouse. What begins promisingly as an investigation of inverted slice-of-life piece (with our hero, the bug, reading a book by Kafka and wondering What Would Jesus Do?) becomes a comedy on perspective (with a human-sized bug and a shoebox elephant) before essentially spiraling out of control. The second half of the film is clearly a metaphor in collage, but it makes no sense.
It's implied that the elephant-man Glarg is a very effective debater - which implies that the elephant head grafted onto the man body is very intelligent - but WHY? That sort of works if Glarg is read as a metaphor for the Republican Party, but if he is, then who is the bug supposed to be? The relationship between the two is analogous to that of Victor Frankenstein and his Creature, but there is no parallel to THAT anywhere in recent political history. The most prominent Republican in recent history, George W. Bush, could well be viewed as a "creation" of the elders of his party, but he certainly didn't defy them.
The last act - where the bug takes it upon himself to stop Glarg, who has inexplicably become fascist - makes no sense at all, drawing as it does from the death of JFK in Dallas. JFK was a beloved president who is almost universally regarded as a man who would have done great things had he lived. What are you trying to say, that he would have become a fascist if he had lived? And if so, where does that tie in with the Republican Party motif you were using two minutes before that, or the Kafkaesque bug-as-man-as-god motif you were using two minutes before THAT? This story makes no sense at all, and actually makes less sense when analyzed. I suppose you could call that art, if that's what you were trying for.
While I did not get the story, I very much enjoyed the music and the artwork. You pay attention to things I think most people would miss, for instance, such as the bug using all four of his "hands" to do things. I can tell you put a lot of work into this, but it really didn't connect with me at all. Sorry.
