Happy Valentine's Day! In a world full of turmoil, this is a quiet place to spend the holiday.
This is not my favorite amongst the nominate Animated Feature films for this year's Academy Awards, but it is my second favorite. The two share lush animation that outshines the story line (my favorite is Flow and the story is one that the reader imposes on it since there is no dialogue at all) and I would highly recommend watching it when you need an injection of calm into your week. These days, that feeling is hard to come by, of course, so perhaps watch it more than once.
The titular robot here is Rozzum Unit 7134, assumedly a Silicon Valley invention, if Silicon Valley tried to update the Jetsons’ household assistant, whose delivery is foiled by a typhoon. Instead, she washes ashore on a remote Pacific north-west-esque isle. The robot, convincingly voiced by Lupita Nyong’o, has the flat affect of Amazon’s Alexa and the purely task-oriented mindset of programming, plus enough of a hint of confused yearning to immediately root for her.
Roz is greeted with understandable suspicion by the furry inhabitants of the island. Roz neither looks nor thinks like a living thing. Her logic is pure binary – execute task, then return to manufacturer. Devoid of a clear purpose and thwarted in her return by the natural world’s chaos, she stumbles into the possession and care of something she does not understand: a lone goose egg, the rest of the family crushed beneath her. Raising the gosling up becomes her raison d'être and the audience comes along for that ride. Sweet and lovely, even with the sub-text that robots could take over most tasks currently accomplished by man.
No comments:
Post a Comment