Mad God

By now you may have heard that Phil Tippett, who had lent his stop motion animation talents to the original STAR WARS trilogy, the ROBOCOP films, and more, took thirty years to complete MAD GOD, a work that is just about indescribable, though grotesque and hellish would be a good start.   As the story goes, as he was working on JURASSIC PARK, Tippett realized that computer generated effects were replacing the practical ones.  He had already begun work on his own opus but cast it aside during this realization.  Years later, he resumed the project and with Kickstarter funds completed it in 2021.  This eighty-three minute film is absolutely painstaking in its detail.  

As you watch this stop motion process, which is achieved by moving objects (puppets, clay figures, etc.) bit by bit (to give the illusion of motion) across individually photographed frames of film, you wonder how it ever did get finished.  I cannot imagine the patience it takes to make this happen.  For MAD GOD, the opening sequence, a riff on the tower of Babel, alone took a few years. This is the sort of craft that was once more common in cinemas, and every moment of this film felt retro in the most  thrilling of fashions.  No matter what played out, I was in awe.  No one can deny the craft.  What does play out, and what it means, however, will be subject to much debate.

There is no traditional narrative.  No spoken dialogue.  The characters are not identified.  But Tippett's statements are unmissable.  For all the interpretations you can pull out of the continuous onslaught of very disturbing imagery, it all comes back to life and death.  Creation and annihilation.  A world rebuilding itself after inevitable decay.   Tippett is a philosopher of nihilism here.  He creates endless scenes of worker drones who toil only to be crushed and decapitated.  Monstrous creatures that snatch newborns and pulverize them into a sort of cosmic dust, dispersed to create a new world that will be as bleak and hopeless as the previous. 

The images are graphic, sometimes scatalogical.   We marvel at the debris stewn landscapes, appearing as if a steampunk nightmare, or a Nine Inch Nails or Tool music video.  While this film is startlingly original, it was impossible not to be reminded of others, everything from German Expressionism to Stanley Kubrick to Terry Gilliam to perhaps even Gaspar Noe.  Dan Wool's score, sometimes dissonant and other times almost soothing, perfectly matches the visuals.  

MAD GOD opens with a verse from Leviticus, and the entire film plays like the grimmest parts of the Old Testament.  Perhaps the title refers to a deity who has given up on mankind and left him to create some sort of terrible order that is doomed to fail.  Or one who is not a loving god but one who creates terminal worlds for his own sick amusement.  Or "mad" as defined as insane.  Rewatches will send you down different interpretive trails and rabbit holes.

Even with its short running time, the relentlessness of MAD GOD did get to me, but unlike some viewers the lack of said narrative did not disassociate me from the movie.  I was all too clued into Phil Tippett's astonishingly dark imagination, and emotionally spent by the conclusion.