Instead of a curtain, the trees of a paradisiacal forest rise like a fold-out book for children. Instead of Adam and Eve, Matt and Amber cavort here: And it is not the woman who commits the fall, but the man. He climbs over a high fence into a mysterious restricted area, where he discovers a fiery unicorn that impaled him, terrified by a stone jumping under his steps. Even after the first pictures it is clear that Dash Shaw and Jane Samborski give classic narratives an idiosyncratic twist in their artful animated film for adults.
In his feature film debut “My Entire Highschool Sinking Into The Sea” the comic artist and graphic novel writer Dash Shaw took the place of Titanic sunk a high school in the sea. Now he is building a zoo, which his wife Jane Samborski populates with all the mythical creatures in the world. Here dragons, unicorns and pegasus, griffins, giant snakes, centaurs and pan, little goblins and dancing light beings find refuge from greedy black market traders and an American military officer who wants to abuse them as a biological weapon. “Cryptozoo” is a collage of many ideas and motifs that sprawls in all directions, a film that simultaneously aims to be an adventure expedition around the world, a utopian fairy tale and a combative civil rights and activist drama.
Dash Shaw found the seed for “Cryptozoo” on Youtube, in a two-minute film by the American animation pioneer Winsor McCay, in which three generations of a centaur family walk gracefully through nature. Another inspiration was the Hokusai drawing of a Baku, a mythical creature from Japanese folk beliefs, a chimeric being with the ability to suck up nightmares. In the film it has the shape of a blue baby elephant with a drawing of a tropical fish. Shortly after the end of the Second World War, the Baku freed the little girl Lauren Gray on an American military base in Japan from the night cruises that conjured up the atomic bombs.
The mythical creatures fight against prejudice, hostility and exploitation
This dramatic experience means that Lauren will dedicate her life to rescuing the mythical creatures, which are an endangered species in the world of film: “People think we are imaginary beasts, in reality most mythological beings are just extremely rare “, explains the Gorgon woman Phoebe:” We really exist! The Cryptozoo is a beginning to show the public that we are completely normal. ” Whether the Cryptozoo is really a good idea is discussed again and again. While some think that it ensures the survival of the hybrid creatures, others argue that they are only stared at like freaks here. Just like the X-Men, they also fight against prejudice, hostility and exploitation and for tolerance and equality.
Dash Shaw has an idiosyncratic style of animation in which a wide variety of art forms have left their mark. The drawings are reminiscent of Aubrey Beardsley and Toulouse Lautrec, but also of Robert Crumb’s comics. The powerful figure of Lauren is related to the female figures of Tamara de Lempicka. The varied play of colors in the landscapes sometimes cites Emil Nolde and Paul Gauguin, then again the children’s book illustrations by Eric Carle or Wolf Erlbruch, or, in keeping with the setting in 1967, the psychedelic yellow submarine animations.
Just like other filmmakers put together their cast, Dash Shaw curates the artists who are responsible for individual locations and backgrounds. You designed the look of the zoo complexes and provincial settlements, the back room of a tarot card reader or a dim nightclub. Sometimes the landscapes are so abstractly composed of colored surfaces and streaks that they only reveal themselves through the noises on the sound track. More than usual in animated films, one has the feeling of traveling very different worlds and styles on a global Jules Verne expedition.
The drawings, gouaches and watercolors, which were initially physically put on paper, were then scanned and animated on the computer, not smoothly flowing, but in such a way that their origins in graphic art are always recognizable. For the synchronization, Shaw and Samborski were able to win a considerable cast of actors, from Peter Stormare to Michael Cera and Zoe Kazan to Lake Bell and Emily Davis. Small dream note on the side: Long before the real storm on the Capitol, Dash Shaw imagined the friendly utopia of a revolutionary takeover of government.
Cryptozoo, USA, 2021 – Directed and written by Dash Shaw. Animation and Creature Design: Jane Samborski. With the voices of Lake Bell, Peter Stormare, Grace Zabriskie, Michael Cera, Zoe Kazan, Emily Davis. On Mubi.com, 95 minutes. Start date: October 22, 2021