Stopmotion (2024)
Directed by: Robert Morgan
Premise: A filmmaker (Aisling Franciosi) produces a stop-motion animation film and her complex feelings about her recently deceased mother haunt the process.
What Works: Stopmotion takes place at the overlap between the artist’s personal life, the content of their work, and the medium itself. It’s an unsettling story about the way those three elements are interrelated and can shape our sense of reality. Ella begins the story working as an assistant to her ailing mother who is a legendary stop motion animator. When her mother dies, Ella creates her own work but her identity is inescapably tied to her parent, causing Ella feelings of insecurity. Stopmotion effectively dramatizes imposter syndrome and creative frustration but also the obsession that so frequently drives artists. As she is invested deeper and deeper into her project, Ella starts seeing the world in terms of stop motion animation and the internal anxieties expressed through her work alter her sense of reality. The world of the film takes on the look of her project and friends and associates become tools of creation. Ella starts interacting with a neighbor girl (Caoilinn Springall) and although it is fairly obvious that the girl is a figment of Ella’s imagination the filmmakers don’t play coy about it. Instead of trying to pull a third act reveal, the focus is on what Ella’s relationship with her imaginary neighbor means. Stop motion animation has a particular visual texture and the filmmakers integrate that look into the movie quite well. The film has some impressive effects and the stop motion sequences are unsettling.
What Doesn’t: Stopmotion is part of a subgenre of movies about mad artists whose creative endeavors eventually turn violent and self-destructive. Black Swan, A Bucket of Blood, and Sweeney Todd have covered this topic and key to their success was integrating the creation of the art to the destruction and debasement of the artist. Stopmotion struggles in that regard. Things get violent all at once. Ella’s final transition into a murderer doesn’t quite follow from the events preceding it.
Disc extras: Interviews and featurettes.
Bottom Line: Stopmotion works within a familiar storytelling conceit of the deranged artist but it brings some style and creativity and psychology to that premise.
Episode: #1019 (October 27, 2024)