(White) Hats Off!

Hats off to stop motion and clay animators who still feel that we, mass movie goers, are worthy of their artistry and hard work! Thank heavens that they believe that we will appreciate and watch in awe the talent that has gone into every little bitty piece and every movement in films like the one I am singling out this time: the wondrous, treasure of a film called The Boxtrolls, directed by Anthony Stacchi and Graham Annable.

The Boxtrolls has a very old-fashioned feel to it, not only because of the Victorian outfits worn by the people in the city of Cheesebridge, where the story takes place, but because of how the story develops and is told. Children in this story are not spared from the cruelty and abandonment of adults. Adults, especially the cold-hearted aristocratic “cheese-eaters” with their tall, embroidered white hats, and the men they have carry out their “dirty work” for them, the “Snatchers”, are rather scarily too real. The Boxtrolls are not. They are the poor, box-dressed inhabitants of the underground of the city and, like in the stories of Dickens, are the warm-hearted, creative beings that give this story its fairy tale quality. There is, of course, a young man that bridges both worlds, so we aren't all bad, Mr. Pickles.

Elle Fanning, the voice of Winnie

The characters are well designed and truly come to life through the great talent of the voices behind them, most particularly Ben Kingsley as the Snatcher, the tremendously lovable Moss from the IT Crowd, Richard Ayoade, playing the philosophical Mr. Pickles, Nick Frost as Mr. Trout, as well as the young talents of Isaac Hempstead Wright as Eggs and Elle Fanning as Winnie.

But our hats are off mainly to those artists and animators that continue the tradition of stop motion animation, the painstakingly slow process that we, the viewers will cherish and admire, even if at a subconscious level, above all the computer generated movements to which we have grown increasingly accustomed. It is probably because we movie goers  are still able to discern that what we are seeing is something real that has been filmed and not just pixels.

Stop-motion is a technique that goes back to the late eighteen hundreds, but it is kept alive today because there are still a handful of studios and directors that unbendingly pursue the art. LAIKA, the Oregon-based studio behind The Boxtrolls, Coraline, ParaNorman; UK’s Aardman Animations and their Wallace & Grommit films, and directors like Wes Anderson and Tim Burton, with their stop-motion works of art: Fantastic Mr. Fox, The Nightmare before Christmas and The Corpse Bride.

Wallace and Gromit The Curse of the Were Rabbit - Fantastic Mr. Fox - The Nightmare Before Christmas

The challenge faced by these animators is  tremendous  these days when technology, in particular FX, VX and digital animation, seem to slowly remove the “wow” factor from audiences more and more used to seeing the impossible. That doesn't mean that there aren't digitally animated movies that still impress us no matter; I've written about them as well in this blog (see We are Groot). The competition is high, however. Stop motion has had to somewhat turn to technology to compete. In particular this is the case with the amazing facial expressions we witness in The Boxtrolls. To carve each face the many times it takes for a moving facial expression to have the flawlessness of digitally animated movies would be almost impossible. The Boxtrolls therefore had models of the facial expressions designed in computer and printed out with a 3D printer. But that was all, those faces, still had to be attached to the bodies and still scrupulously shot a fraction of a movement at a time.

The result is wonderful. Stay after the credits to see a behind the scenes piece, marvelously narrated by Mr. Pickles and his who controls who philosophy. I’m sure you’ll then join me in taking your white or red hat off to these artists that keep these gems of art in motion for us.