Sean Parker
It’s hard to remember a time when experimental filmmaking was as popular as it is today. Maybe it’s due to all of the film fests I’m a part of, but several titles have fit the label in the last few years. From horror narrative Skinamarink and the Afrofuturist Neptune Frost to interpretive dance horror film The Severing and The Langoliers recut Timekeepers of Eternity, there are many unique and inventive ways to tell a story these days. Were it not for a trusted friend who admitted to loving the experience of Animalia Paradoxa, I probably would have missed this one at Fantasia.
Though everyone’s viewing experience differs, Animalia Paradoxa was an enriching art nouveau project glinting with hope through a fatalistic and surreal lens. Director Niles Atallah conceives of a post-apocalypse where humans don’t exactly exist anymore, yet the principles of human society are still tremendously present. We’re introduced to a creature with dirt-blackened skin and colorless eyes who’s never given a name, though presented as Animalia (Andrea Gómez) in the credits.
Animalia spends their days in a dilapidated house retrieving trinkets and trading them to a hand with long, thick fingernails for food to feed a humanoid suspended from the ceiling by her hair. That suspended creature, whose hair is outstretched like the branches of a tree, allows Animalia to siphon the water coursing off her locks. Animalia fills many jugs with water in various ways throughout her day, pouring her efforts into a moldy bathtub they sleep in nightly. Dreaming of ocean life, such as jellyfish and stingrays, Animalia longs for the sea.
Through Animalia’s crawling, stretching, and occasional presence on ceilings, the audience sees an evolved creature. Animalia never talks. The little speaking that does exist is either reel-to-reel lectures about oceans and nature scenes or religious apocrypha spread through the streets. The resemblances to podcasts and AM radio are glaringly apparent and work contrarily as science and religion often do. Several metaphors begin to reveal themselves. But while Animalia Paradoxa aligns itself in an ecological awareness bubble, there’s way more focus on our current culture.
The film’s post-apocalypse is a mirror of consumerist labor culture, working desperately to attain a small slice of heaven through a cyclical structure of work, pay, purchase, and repeat. At one point, the zealots maliciously destroy Animalia’s bathtub because they don’t believe the ocean exists, causing Animalia to seek a new goal.
At that point, a question about who we all are becomes relevant. Animalia conveys thoughts and emotions via the use of stock footage, which shows the Earth’s destruction through ecological disaster in the beginning, the ocean life Animalia imagines in her dreams, and cuts to images of fires when their bathtub is destroyed. As Animalia’s journey continues and they’re forced to make a deal with a greedy overseer, they must give up something that reveals who they truly are. The weight of being perceived is heavy, exposing Animalia to further cruelty.
The point of the film, as obscured as it is, has to do with nature. Human nature, individual nature, and good old-fashioned nature-nature. The phrase Animalia Paradoxa relates to an 18th-century book, Systema Naturae, and refers to “contradictory animals.” These are magical and mythical creatures, cryptids, and alike. Since that fits Animalia’s classification, the film’s supremely nuanced mechanics, the inference of religion, and its punitive resolutions suggest a reference to LGBTQ+ identity themes and their suppression. Essentially, the film is a fish-out-of-water story, wondering why the existence of such a beautiful creature, which some argue couldn’t naturally exist despite standing before them, is such an issue when the world is burning around us.
Animalia Paradoxa won’t be for everyone. At only eighty minutes, the movie sometimes feels a little stretched. This high-art film won’t appeal much to those who prefer a narrative on-the-rails story structure. About seventy-five percent of the movie is without dialogue, and much of the film is inferred and meditative. But if there are fans of silent cinema, particularly the creativeness of Georges Méliès or Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, then they should give Animalia Paradoxa a try. Set pieces and production design are minimal, yet the film evokes resemblances to the surrealist style of Terry Gilliam’s Tideland as well as Jean-Pierre Jeunet and Marc Caro’s The City of Lost Children.
Animalia Paradoxa held its North American Premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival on July 20. For additional information, see the film’s page on the Fantasia website.
Animalia Paradoxa – Trailer
ANIMALIA PARADOXA raconte la quête d’eau d’une humanoïde amphibie alors qu’elle déambule dans un dédale de paysages post-apocalyptiques. À l’ouverture du film, un rideau de plastique est tiré par la main d’un mannequin décrépit. Sur une machine de montage poussiéreuse, un poème apparaît : ” L’extinction massive s’est faufilée sans qu’on l’entende.
