Renaissance (Christian Volckman 2006)
Posted on December 11 at 13.09, 2006 by Eric Mahleb
Animation is the ideal tool for Science Fiction cinema since it can help create and display on the screen what does not yet exist. One of the obstacles that Science Fiction cinema has always faced is the tension between the need to stretch reality and the need to keep it believable and real in a way that most audiences can still relate to it. This is the unfortunate reason why most Sci-Fi films tend to be filled with inconsistencies and a disparity between what the story wants to show us and what it actually does show us.
Animation can relieve this tension by creating believable and abstract worlds. It can free the imagination, which is the point of Science Fiction.
Yet, this free rein of the visual creativity often comes at a price. The traditional aspects of filmmaking such as dialogue, storyline, and, when applicable, acting, have usually suffered greatly in animation films. But today, the line between animation and traditional cinema is becoming more and more blurry. With Toy Story in 1995, Pixar were the first to reach out to such a large audience with an animated film that had strong characters and a solid storyline. Finding Nemo and The Incredibles and the films of Hayao Miyazake were worthy additions and helped continue to increase the popularity of the genre.
But the past few years have witnessed the emergence of a new genre, one where real non-digital characters are merging with digital characters, both in real and animated environments. While the concept itself is not new (Roger Rabbit, Cool World, Dick Tracy, some Disney films), the techniques used are and they reflect the expanding popularity and acceptance of animation and digital technology in our society and in cinema.
Renaissance is the latest step in this evolution. It uses motion capture and rotoscopy, a technique used already with great success by Richard Linklater in Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly. But contrary to films such as Sin City, Immortel, Cashern or Sky Captain, Renaissance tries hard to not let its visuals (in spite of their clear superiority) completely take over the storyline and dialogues. Perhaps the acting also seems better in Renaissance because, as with A Scanner Darkly, the faces of the actors are partly hidden by the animation, making small changes in expression hard to detect. And the film successfully and beautifully creates a dystopic, noir, menacing, damp and lonely Paris of the future, in a way that is reminiscent of Blade Runner.
Still, it would be naïve to call Renaissance a good film. The storyline is a bit weak and the dialogues superficial at times. But it provides for an overall experience that is fascinating and engrossing and shows that it is possible to envision a future when non-traditional cinematic experiences will be able to compete with more conventional ones in terms of quality.
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4 Responses to “Renaissance”
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tony Says:
October 22, 2007 at 22.27Hey man…I’ve been searching far and wide for the name of the techno track that is playing at the nightclub early in the movie. the track is wicked, but you can’t find it listed in the credits. Any ideas??
Take it easy…Tony
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Beowulf - Quiet Please - Film reviews by Eric Mahleb Says:
January 9, 2008 at 11.16[...] We live in a world where the artificial and the real are merging at an increasing speed. Indeed, the word real started to lose its original meaning many years ago, particularly in the 80s, as exemplified by the works of people such as Beaudrillard and Fukuyama. Simulation, simulacrum, hyperreal, virtual reality, augmented reality, alternate reality, all different ways to describe variations of what is slowly replacing the real as we used to know it. As i described in this post and in this essay, animation is an ideal tool to explore these alternate realities and to depict visions of the future. But there are different ways of using animation in film, and some are better than others, depending on the criteria that one uses to judge a film. [...]
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Chrysalis - Quiet Please - Film reviews by Eric Mahleb Says:
June 10, 2008 at 12.10[...] Taking place in the Paris of the very near future, this French cyber thriller, reminiscent of the slightly better Renaissance (2006), tries very hard to be noir, cool and hip but pretty much fails on all levels. [...]
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Babylon A.D. - Quiet Please - Cinema Futures by Eric Mahleb Says:
October 12, 2008 at 17.18[...] Films such as Chrysalis (2007), Renaissance (2006), Immortel (2004), Dante 01 (2008) and Vidocq (2001) are beautiful to look at but are for the most part completely devoid of substance. Their comic book approach explores new visual opportunities but forgets basic film making principles such as strong acting, appropriate casting, realistic and intelligent dialogues, proper script and scene development and professional editing, all of which are essential to the process of making a film of quality (Dante 01 stands slightly above the rest in this regard). Banlieue 13 (2004) marries the athleticism of Parkour with the ever increasing popularity of martial arts in France, but fails on every other levels. Babylon AD, the film supposedly reviewed here. is a travesty of a movie, an overindulgent and amateurish farce that deserves to join the Olympe of the worst that Hollywood has ever produced. Directed by Matthieu Kassovitz, the French actor and director who somehow managed to direct the gripping and enthralling La Haine (1995), it touches on futuristic subjects such as artificial intelligence, cloning, human enhancement, reanimation, overpopulation and global warming, but it does so in a way that is unbelievably childish and ignorant. I can’t help but thinking about how Kubrick had done his research to prepare for his next film, Napoleon, by filling entire rooms with books, paraphernalia and by slowing indexing on paper cards every piece of information he had ever read or obtained about his subject matter. Kubrick might be an extreme case, but it seems to me that any filmmaker should at least do a minimum of research before tackling a subject. [...]