Review by
Benjamin Poole
Directed by: Mike Cheslik
Starring: Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, Wes Tank, DougMancheski, Olivia Graves, Luis
Rico
We don't get cartoons in the same way that we used to, do we? Quick
research suggests that the most popular streaming cartoons (from the
dictionary definition, "a film using animation techniques to photograph a
humorously exaggerated sequence of drawings rather than real people or
objects," and discounting what I perceive as Anime because I know people
can be precious) are implicitly narrative based, and built from branded
properties (Paw Patrol, Minions). In the UK, Bluey (apparently amazing) and
Peppa Pig rule supreme, offering oblique moral lessons for
little ones. As a grown man I don't suppose it's any of my business really
but whence the Silly Symphonies? The Merrie Melodies? The Looney Tunes?
Compact spectacles wherein verisimilitude was stretched into colourful,
exciting new shapes while anthropomorphic figures performed vibrant feats
of comic physicality? I've just been dipping into some of the earliest SSs
just now and feel well astounded: the quivering motion of the frames and
the totemic imagery seem almost occult in their uncanny, monochrome
tangibility. There really is nothing like them. And, aside from the breezy
cruelty and violence of these cartoons, what strikes you now is the
complexity of the worlds depicted and the sophistication which they assume
of their juvenile audience (I just watched Music Land 1935, with its inter-species nuptials, polysyllabic on-screen text and
assumption that kids will know about diverse musical genres along with the
specific properties of the instruments used to realise them, too). Will we
see the like again?
Possibly, replies Mike Cheslik's Hundreds of Beavers, a purposefully bizzarro feature length which locates the trials and
tribulations of a frontier fur trapper within the cinematic language of
cartoon animation: slapstick, strangeness, silliness. It is (just about)
dialogue free, black and white and almost two hours long. Jean (Ryland Brickson Cole Tews, who also co-writes)is a hapless cider farmer/brewer, whose dipsomania
leads to his farm being destroyed by opportunist beavers. He ends up
seeking revenge on the semi-aquatic rodents, and coin too, by returning
their pelts to the local furrier (Doug Mancheski) and his daughter
(Olivia Graves), whom he wants to put one on.
Doesn't sound like a barrel of laughs, I know, but the animals are not
real, and are instead played by people in the sort of full body costumes
you sometimes see on ill-advised stag nights. The mise-en-scene is the
flickering grey of golden age cartoons (although, unfortunately, digital
rendering has never been able to capture the eerie 20-frames-a-second
painstaked magic of actual cel animation), and the diegesis is one of
playful, hyperbolic plasticity.
An early example: in the first 10 minutes we watch Jean being bested by
some rabbits. Hungry (his stomach visibly shakes, with comedy noises which
will become characteristic to the film; the sort of sounds made when Fred
Flintstone runs), he fixes to catch some tasty rabbits. As a honey trap,
from the wintery landscape of ice and bare branches he makes a female
Leporidae with massive tits. Jean then attempts, from a hillside vantage
point, to skittle the lusted mammals over with a bowling ball of snow
which gathers icy girth as it trundles down the incline towards the
infatuated rabbits. The ball misses (a good joke: the eventually cavernous
"finger holes" roll over the triple formation of frisky rabbits and buxom
snow bunny), so then he tries again by making more snow bunnies, a massive
snow carrot, etc, in the type of Sisyphean Wile-E-Coyote dynamic which
will come to constitute the episodic plot of
Hundred of Beavers.
The gags come at such a rapid pace, and are more hit than miss, that there
is always something going on. Brickson Cole Tews' performance codes arrive
via the exaggerated gestures of silent comedy, which demand a steady,
have-a-go energy which is fun, too. And while you couldn't really say that
the film replicates the pleasures of animation, it does at least pay
loving homage to them.
Problem is though that those cartoons were 10 minutes tops -
Hundreds of Beavers goes on forever. After the first hour it
becomes almost Dadaist in its commitment to the theme, of variations upon
variations of beavers beating Jean, or Jean occasionally coming up trumps
at Pyrrhic physical cost (CGI enhanced, the slapstick doesn't have the
analogue conviction of its silent-era inspirations). Like a cartoon, there
are no real stakes in this series of sequences. And as the mutilated
beavers, rabbits and racoons (Jean spends most of the film sporting an
outsize racoon head as a hat) pile up,
Hundreds of Beavers takes on the mien of a Mondo film for
furries with a particularly sadistic nature.
Even though all sorts of nasty shit went on in cartoons (the sociopathy of
Road Runner notwithstanding, the opening of 1929's
Skeleton Dance shows a pair of vexing cats attempt to rip
each others' noses off), the balance is slightly off in
Hundreds of Beavers. At one point, there is a post-mortem scene where the furrier's daughter
splits open a beaver and takes out its innards, which are made of plush
materials. The transgressive oddness of the prolonged moment intimates the
disruption of horror (a destabilising tension of imagery and suggestion:
within the cartoony context it turns out that this was a living creature,
with functioning organs, a heart and lungs... but which are made of
cushions). Harmless overall as the film is, such scenes have (perhaps
unintentional) visceral poignancy which we never felt for Tom off
Tom and Jerry when his tail got set on fire or whatever.
Speaking of the daughter, at one point she beguiles Jean with another sort
of beaver while executing a superb pole dance (the actor specifies the
ability in her Insta bio, and is really good at it - in fact, I rewound
the scene a couple of times to professionally take it in, etc etc), adding
to the at times bawdy nature of the film. So, it isn't, you know, for the
kids who might find this sort of silliness amusing. Thing is, excluding
the gentle minded and the curious, with its steadfast commitment to
syncopated storytelling and silliness, I'm unsure who
Hundreds of Beavers IS for. Nonetheless, the realisation of
such an oddball premise, and the film's manic ingenuity, is pretty dam
impressive.
Hundreds of Beavers begins a series
of North American screenings from January 26th. A UK/ROI release has yet
to be announced.
