Watch the Film!

This short is featured on the Animation Show Vol. 3 DVD.

The easiest way to anger the non-adventurous movie watcher is not to show them something shocking, but to show them experimental animation. They become belligerent with what seems to be nonsense and you can watch as the anger consumes them when someone tries to explain the meaning. This could be for many reasons, which I will get to later.

So why do I bring this universal statement up in the discussion of Max Hattler’s experimental short COLLISION? Because the film is a great example of the barrier between those who like experimental film and those who hate it. Hattler’s explosion of bright colors and shapes is timed to a firework-like soundtrack. His use of color and symbols make it fairly easy to read his meaning. They represent the various flags of the world as they mix and meld and explode into a celebration of multiculturalism. The message comes off fairly obvious… at least for me. Someone else might just see a kaleidoscope of pointlessness.

So it seems intimidation is the barrier that experimental film presents. Do you get it or do you not? Some viewers will find meaning in everything and others will not. Some viewers will hold their own personal profound meaning up as a pretentious badge of honor. Some will reject all notions of meaning as a stand against the artsy and the fartsy. Others will invent meaning just so they don’t look like they didn’t get it. Who wants to watch a film that makes them feel stupid? This is why critiquing experimental film is so difficult. One person’s scribble is another person’s Jackson Pollock. So taste plays a huge part in experiencing experimental works. So I take two approaches to judging experimental films — what did I take from it, and what did the filmmaker intend and did they convey that meaning on screen. The latter is not always available, so you must trust your own judgment.

For Hattler’s COLLISION my personal take and his intention (which I discovered in an interview with him) were one in the same. In the realm of experimental animation, his piece is fairly easy to decipher, because if you recognize his use of common symbols in both his visuals and music you are easily lead to his point. Did it blow me away? No. It presented its idea in a skillful and engaging way, but didn’t make me think of the subject in a new light. So I liked it, but didn’t love it. Like all film, some experimental films are more difficult than others. Some have no grand meaning, because they’re more like dance than theater. A study in movement. Some have no meaning because the filmmaker has made them so obscure that no one can decipher the code. Some have no meaning, because they have no meaning. So in the end, COLLISION is no different than a feature film like BABEL, only speaks a different filmic language in expressing the same ideas.

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