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Flatland
by Phil Hall from Film Threat.com
The state of animation has become nothing short of dismal, with a glut of visually hideous CGI endeavors
full of cutesy animals or ridiculous anthropomorphic inanimate objects
(do we really need movies about talking cars or talking baseball bats?).
Even Japanese anime has become predictable and stale. For anyone who genuinely
loves animation, it often feels as if the genre is achieving a glut of quantity and a serious deficit in quality.
Well, there appears to be salvation - from the unlikeliest of places.
A Square has a revelation about Flatland
Independent filmmaker
Ladd P. Ehlinger Jr.,
working out of Hunstville, Alabama, has created an animated feature that is literally something of a
throwback: in this case, a throwback to the glory days of
"Yellow Submarine," "Fritz the Cat," "Fantastic Planet," "Wizards," "Allegro Non Troppo," and
"Heavy Metal." With a visual style that is thoroughly unique and a personality that shoulders themes
and concepts without contemporary precedent in this genre, Ehlinger has created a work of art that could be
dubbed (with no risk of hyperbole) as a new animation masterpiece.
Ehlinger's film is
"Flatland," based on the prescient
1884 sci-fi
novella by
Edwin Abbott.
For starters, Abbott's text could easily be considered one of the least likely candidates for cinema adaptation:
a bizarre but witty mediation of a parallel universe made up of two-dimensional geometric objects. The hero
is a square (literally) who discovers a pair of equally unlikely universes: a one-dimensional world of lines and
a three-dimensional universe that literally brings new depth to the square's appreciation of life.
Abbott's mathematical flights of fancy were considered a thinly-veiled satire of Victorian England's rigid society,
with plenty of veiled digs at class and gender discrimination. Yet his satire is dated by contemporary standards
and his mania for mathematics is clearly at odds for today's society (which, on the whole, doesn't seem able to
balance a checkbook, let alone comprehend theories of spatial dimensions).
For the film version of
"Flatland," Ehlinger has kept much of Abbott's concept while updating the story to meet the needs of modern times.
Some touches are extremely contemporary, particularly the subplot of a megalomaniac president who
conspires to wage a war against a non-threatening country based on the flimsiest of pretexts (sound familiar?).
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