THE STORY – After being let go from her robotic companion start-up, Beck, an anti-social engineer, finds herself in the offices of a new company claiming to preserve a person’s consciousness inside a cloud system. Her first assignment: drive the company’s most valuable client, Paul, a lonely button manufacturer, to his final appointment.
THE CAST – Sydney Chandler, Takehiro Hira, Marin Ireland, Lili Taylor, Maria Dizzia, Tom McCarthy, Emil Wakim & Maximilian Lee Piazza
THE TEAM – Brian Tetsuro Ivie (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 96 Minutes
The “San Junipero” episode of “Black Mirror” has all but revived the cinematic conversation about extending one’s life into the digital consciousness in modern science fiction, let alone exponentially in the decade since its release. What would the experience be like to take on our physical form that whithers away into an afterlife hardwired by ones and zeros? Is it actually the closest an individual can get to experiencing paradise, or is it merely an instilled quietude that helps us cope with whatever is next for us in the great beyond? It’s something filmmaker Brian Tetsuro Ivie has clearly thought about in today’s society, which pushes us toward a technological evolution more terrifying to experience than to conceptualize. His latest feature, “Anima,” takes this concept to a common place others have gone before him; his serene approach to storytelling and characters leads to a sincere sci-fi indie worth seeking out.
The patient storytelling in Ivie’s low-fi approach to science fiction evokes similar shades to the genre that Kognada’s masterfully accomplished with “After Yang.” While Kognada’s excellence behind the camera and on the page is very much in a league of his own, Ivie’s work here is efficient, as “Anima” wastes no time setting up the inevitable bond-fueled road trip that Beck (Sydney Chandler) and Paul (Takehiro Hira) embark on. Beck is skeptical because her life isn’t going as expected. Her musical ambitions, mainly tied to her father’s musical career, have all but evaporated when she stumbles upon a new opportunity for work. That’s where the experimental company Anima comes in: uploading customers’ consciousness into the cloud so they may remain there forever, to be visited by people whenever they please. To the digitally departed, it will be like they never left. Beck, who was deemed a perfect match for successful button mangnant Paul, is to pick him up and drive him back for the procedure, since his terminal condition only continues to worsen.
This narrative structure, although straightforward, keeps the story from drifting into familiarity that would be grating if expanded upon. Time in “Anima” is limited for these characters, just as it is for the audience, and Ivie takes advantage of that sentiment. The film hits all the expected beats, but Ivie’s direction maintains a composed energy that gives it an identity that feels somewhat unique. Ivie, through Matheus Bastos’s gorgeously composed cinematography, creates a lush Neo-York aesthetic that feels like a world of its own while residing in our reality. The gentle blending of a tangible materiality gives “Anima” a heartbeat, especially as Japanese city-pop and other carefully curated musical selections serenade these two unlikely companions.
“Anima” also flourishes due to Chandler and Hira’s chemistry, which gives it, ironically, an indie spin on the “Driving Miss Daisy” dynamic of an employer and employee slowly bonding over the course of their road trip. Chandler, who rose to popularity with her work on “Alien: Earth,” is more than capable of holding her own because Ivie gives her enough ammunition as a performer to watch her calculated facade slowly meld into a relationship she never expected to develop. Her coldness pairs perfectly with Hira, who, after “Shogun,” is all but thriving in this period of his career. It’s refreshing to see one of the more dependable working actors in this industry get a moment to display the many shades of himself as a performer we don’t often see. His work elevates “Anima” and is surely one of the best displays of what he can still bring. If anything, the inevitable detours, which ramp up emotionally from a hilarious kimono-donning Tom McCarthy (yes, that one), all but put an expectation on viewers to deliver an emotional response that doesn’t wholly work until the film’s finale. The ending, which feels a bit too quiet even for the wavelength “Anima” abides by, is not enough to detract from what makes Ivie’s work seem so refreshing in a genre that tends to skew towards doing the most. “Anima” is a film that will most likely fall through the radar of many, yet it’s one of the better narrative features I’ve already stumbled upon here at SXSW.
