Christopher at Sea

Tom CJ Brown’s atmospheric animation Christopher at Sea begins in Southampton when the eponymous traveller embarks on a personal voyage. Seeking something unfathomable from a proper oceanic odyssey, he takes a berth on a cargo ship heading across the Atlantic. What follows takes as its inspiration Franz Schubert’s 1823 song cycle Die schone Mullerin which itself was based on a series of poems by Wilhelm Müller. They tell of a young wanderer who fell in love with a miller’s daughter but who was displaced from her affections by another man before drowning himself in a brook. Brown’s film presents a shifting adaptation of this tale, dominated by the hulking form of the vessel.

Aboard the ship, Christopher’s life feels marginal. He proffers information that he has left a sweetheart at home – and he also receives an email from her while at sea – but he very much embodies the drifter, passed down from Muller via Schubert. To begin with, his time is mostly spent alone, he smokes up on deck, staring over the railings and the roiling waves. It seems the be the water that has drawn him. Subsequently, he becomes equally drawn to a crew member who he often glances over at during dinner and whom he bumps into on deck before sharing a cigarette. Afraid of his desires, or afraid at least of acting upon them, he watches from a distance, glimpses in secret, only for another passenger to come aboard and capture the sailor’s gaze.

Painted in an ocean’s worth of blues and greys, the aesthetic of Christopher at Sea makes for images that are as mutable as the sea itself. Particularly as its protagonist dreams and fantasizes, the architecture seems to warp and weave into the fabric of the air around him. As Christopher becomes more enamoured and jealous as a consequence, the stability of the world is shaken, and reality becomes unmoored. It makes for spectacular visuals, particularly in a climactic sequence of raging torrents and wracked envy. As Schubert’s music plays and Muller’s stories echo in the mind, Brown’s film finds its own way to explore the ecstatic allure of the briny deep.

Director: Tom CJ Brown
Screenplay: Tom CJ Brown, Laure Desmazieres
Producer: Emmanuel-Alain Raynal, Pierre Baussaron, Amanda Miller, Hanna Stolarski, Nick Read, Emily-Jane Brown
Editing: David Cohen
Sound: Ant Food
Music: Brian Mcomber, Judith Berkson
Production companies: Miyu Productions (France) Psyop (USA) Temple Carrington Brown (UK)
Venue: Venice Film Festival (Orizzonti)
In English
20 minutes