Directed by Phil Tippett
USA, 2021
Apparently three decades in the making, this week’s film is something very different. By different, I mean a different kind of cinema. Crafted by writer-director and, importantly, visual effects guru (credits on Star Wars and Jurassic Park) Phil Tippett Mad God is a piece of work that is sui generis, a stop-motion animation that is almost impossible to describe. But at ReidsonFilm we love a challenge…
The film opens with a prologue: A colossal spiralling tower looms over a desolate landscape, set against a blood-red sky. Tiny figures ascend and descend as dark storm clouds are closing in. Oh, it’s the Tower of Babel. A title card then presents one of the more repellent verses from the Book of Leviticus:
If after all this you will not listen to me, I will punish you for your sins seven times over. You will eat the flesh of your sons and the flesh of your daughters. I will destroy your high places, cut down your incense altars and pile your dead bodies on the lifeless forms of your idols, and I will abhor you.
This kind of sets the tone for what is to follow. We next cut to an unnamed figure – the Assassin, according to the film’s credits – clad in a gas mask, goggles, and a steel helmet. He descends from the sky on a wire, down to a fiery wasteland. Is he on a Dantean descent through the circles of Hell, or does his tightly clutched briefcase tell us he is on a mission? Who knows, because from here on in it all becomes very confusing. Which should be ok, as this is a film that embraces abstraction over clarity – I’m not convinced there really is a narrative, or a coherent one at least. Watching Mad God must be like one of Wallace’s (or perhaps Gromit’s) darkest nightmares, after he has had a bit too much ketamine. It’s bold – certainly, brutal – often, baroque – most definitely, and beautiful? That would be pushing it.
A cabinet of claymation curiosities parade across the screen, a gang of grotesqueries, either stamping on or eating one another for no clear purpose. Such is the pattern of life I suppose. The detail that has gone into the production design of Mad God is truly astonishing – it evokes the painted hellscape of Hieronymus Bosch’s The Garden of Earthly Delights. A technical tour de force, and yet it also resembles a misfiring Catherine Wheel – shooting off historical, cultural, and artistic references all over the place.
Amidst the melange of carnage and creation, there are some sequences of live action. Independent filmmaker Alex Cox – presumably a mate – does a turn, garbed in a long, red cloak and sporting some Nosferatu talons. On the basis of this performance I’d advise that he really should stick behind the camera. A couple more ‘actors’ feature as surgeon and a nurse in an incomprehensible subplot featuring the Eraserhead baby, but really this extended, experimental film is all about the animation: a scattershot burst of vignettes featuring monstrous beings with either pendulous breasts or orifices spurting bodily fluids, who end up either eaten or squashed.
Does Mad God have a message or a manifesto? That is hard to say. Watching a procession of Giacometti figures traipse through these dark satanic mills, I did wonder if the director was offering a biting critique of capitalism. But I’m not so sure how the blended assortment of Warhammer and Wehrmacht figures fit with that.
Tippett’s film plays on riffs from other work – Mad God features a mysterious rectangular monolith (see our last review) and the closing sequence includes an obvious homage to 2001’s Stargate sequence. Given the presumably limited resources he manages to create a world that is both awful and awesome. And yet, with an 80-minute running time and a narrative black hole, your mind does start to wander – Mad God feels like a series of shorts haphazardly stitched together. In retrospect, ReidsonFilm should have taken the director’s advice seriously:
I would recommend either taking a gummy, smoking some marijuana, drinking a bottle of wine, or bringing a vomit bag to watch it.
These kind of demonic hellscapes are where stop-motion is at its best. Criminally slept on in my opinion… can't believe I had never heard of this before. HG Geiger, Hieronymus Bosch, Elden Ring. Liked the blending of the mechanical and the organic, the use of scale, big creatures, small creatures – N
All Creatures Great and Small? – S
Reids’ Results (out of 100)
C - 69
T - 74
N - 83
S - 66
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Coming next… Shutter Island(2010)
As always, great concise well observed review. Thank you for watching this so that I don’t have to.
For fans of 'Mad God', watching 'Junk Head' is a must - https://youtu.be/O2ygfn-WqF8