Fragile Machine (2005)

Leda Nea stares into the void that surrounds her and asks the ancient question "Who am I?" The words echo ceaselessly until the world she believes to exist has been destroyed.

Director:

Ben Steele

Writers:

Darren Dugan, John Pinckney

Stars:

Molly Pinckney, Xi

Cast

Credited cast:
Molly Pinckney	...	Goho, Mary Nea
Xi	...	Leda Nea

Storyline

Fragile Machine is an underground cg film about science, religion, and man's role in a new nature of which he has partial authorship. Through a unique combination of animation and music which some have likened to an 'electronic operetta' it tells the story of the first girl to be built in a factory instead of born from a womb. The questions abound regarding her creation. Why was she made? Does she have a soul? Where would she go if she died? These and other questions are all examined in a fractured and experimental way. As in opera, the story serves the music and visuals, whose style embodies the drama of the piece. It is intended for audiences who love film and animation for their own sake, who want to take time to dissect a massively layered and compressed work and extract meaning and underlying structure. The work draws upon conclusions from quantum physics about the structure of reality, and attempts to build a bridge between numerous philosophical and religious traditions ...

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Plot Keywords:

postmodern | taipei taiwan | future | computer animation | tokyo japan | 

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Genres:

Animation | Short | Sci-Fi

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Details

Official Sites:

Official site [United States]

Country:

USA

Language:

English French Japanese Mandarin

Release Date:

4 March 2005 (USA)

Box Office

Budget:

$45,000 (estimated)

Company Credits

Production Co:

Aoineko

Technical Specs

Color:

Color

User Reviews

Not much beyond some pretty pictures and music

Leda Nea agrees to undergo an experiment concerning machine and human interfacing. The experiment doesn't go as planned and Nea is trapped in a machine shell trying to come to terms with her old live and new.

Or something like that, I'm not sure it was lots of mostly pretty pictures with a New Age jazz score behind them. Its more dream like than lucid, following its own set of rules and reality. Its nice but never really seems to amount to very much. It does struggle to be meaningful, but I don't think it really succeeds. I think it thinks its meaningful, which isn't the same thing.

The film, while often breathtaking, often reminds me of the Mind's Eye video tapes from 10 or 15 years ago which collected what was then cutting edge animation and put it to a similar type of score. I make the comparison because not only do both have a similar feel, they also often use a similar style of animation, which 15 years ago was cutting edge, but here seems more than a bit out of date. The "old school" animation isn't bad its just that compared to some of the other hyper real imagery it seems very much out of place.

This is a renter at best.