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Best movie ever!

It's a movie as timely as it is provocative and amazingly, for much of its running time, it is weirdly funny.

The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

"Frank Film" is a 9-minute animated short film that won Frank Mouris, the man who made it and also the one we hear in here, his first and only Academy Award. He was surprisingly unprolific in the over 4 decades since his biggest career achievement, at least in terms of film. So yeah, I cannot agree with the Academy here. Neither the animation nor the comments are awards-worthy in anyway and this film is evidence of how weak the (animated) short film genre was in the 1970s compared to previous decades if films like this could receive major awards attention. I did not enjoy the watch. It is not as bad as many other experimental films, but the two voices we hear at the same time become annoying pretty quickly, so that I would have given this one an even lower rating if it had gone on for a couple more minutes. Not good. Not recommended.

So I just got finished watching this animated short by Frank and Caroline Mouris that won the Academy Award for the year it was made and was put into the Library of Congress' National Film Registry during the '90s. In it, Frank is speaking in two soundtracks: one telling his life story and the other listing words that start with "F" or something with a similar sound. This happens as constantly flashing images of something relating to whatever subject is at hand is mentioned. It's initially fascinating to watch and hear but after a while I wondered when the whole damn thing would end! Still, it's worth a look if you're curious about this sort of thing.

This Oscar-winning animation is a giant headache and could easily be used by evil, repressive governments to torture and brainwash their people and is one of the best examples of a truly awful film that somehow won this award. While I can definitely appreciate the effort it took making this film (cutting out thousands and thousands of magazine pictures to make collages), the problem is that it is so cacophonous. You see, the sound track consists of two alternate scripts being read CONSTANTLY throughout the film. Both narrators are the same person. One constantly repeats words starting with the F-sound while the other talks ad nauseum about his very dull life--during which time these collages appear and disappear rapidly. The film has no commercial appeal whatsoever and is great for people who like artsy and pretentious film--otherwise beware, as it's totally painful and annoying.

I have a fetish for films made entirely of cutout images. There's an NFB film called "This is a Recorded Message" made right around the same time that also uses a similar cutout technique. Both films use advertisements to create their point. However, where "Message" is scathing critique of advertising, "Frank Film" uses advertising images to construct a moving autobiographical portrait of the film maker, Frank Mouris. I was amazed at the way Mouris was able to find all these thousands of images and then stick them all together with two overlapping soundtracks that perfectly match up. It works beautifully, without at all being confusing or hard to follow. I wish there was more I could say about the film, but words escape me. Of course, I should mention some specific moment from the film that had an effect on me, but in this case the whole film is that one moment. It never gives you time to reflect on what you've seen until its over. When Mouris' voice mentions television, hundreds of T.V sets fill the screen, forming complicated patterns. Similar things happen throughout the film: specific words trigger an array of objects, forming intricate designs. It's stunning.