VERDICT: One of the traditional fables of Sang Kancil, the wily mouse-deer, is brought exquisitely to life in Zhang Xu Zhan’s electrifying, otherworldly animation.
In Compound Eyes of Tropical, Taiwanese ceremonial craft and performance are combined with febrile stop-motion animation to astonishing effect.
Taking as its basis a fairy tale popular in Malaysia and Indonesia about a clever mouse-deer named Sang Kancil, Zhang Xu Zhan’s strange, shimmering animation is a heart-pounding feast for the senses. Zhang is regularly referred to as one of Taiwan’s most exciting young artists and that is understandable when watching this vivid work which borrows aesthetic elements from the paper crafts of Taiwanese funeral ceremonies in the service of a wordless ballet infused with shamanistic energies and tinged by unusual magical realist details. Already a decorated award-winner, the film now competes in the animation competition at the 2023 edition of DOK Leipzig.
The story upon which the film is based is just one of many that feature Sang Kancil, a trickster figure similar to Br’er Rabbit. In this instance, the story sees him arrive at a river infested with crocodiles, where he uses his cunning to not only escape their rapacious jaws but also to convince them to unwittingly form a line so that he can hop from one bank to the other via their backs. In Zhang’s film, this same central plot plays out, but Sang Kancil is a human in a finely wrought costume and the whole endeavour seems to be a dream conjured, and viewed through, the splintered eyes of jungle-dwelling insects.
Accompanied by the chorus of increasingly fraught drumming, this strange ritual becomes almost like an action spectacular like the performer, bent double beneath the cloth mouse-deer outfit, is participating in some death-defying rite of passage. This effect is more palpable in moments of great peril when image seems to flicker in what transpires to be fragmented views of the same situation but slightly different circumstances – a youth in a different colour costume, or a river filled with giant crabs – hinting at the cyclic nature of such traditions. In the film’s surreal and ambiguous ending, a calm is shatteringly bestowed before a larger cycle seems to be alluringly initiated.
Director, editing: Zhang Xu Zhan
Screenplay: Zhang Xu Zhan, Chi Chun Feng
Producer: Yu Chu Chan
Cinematography: Zhang Xu Zhan, Kuan Yu Chen
Animation: Zhang Xu Zhan, Raito Low, Liang Lie Chen
Sound: Prairie WWWW, Zi Ming Feng
Music: Prairie WWWW
Production: Zhan Zhan Xi Qi Culture Co., Ltd.
Venue: DOK Leipzig (International Competition Animated Film)
No dialogue
17 minutes
