THE STORY – A surprise attack on a joint expedition between humans and their emancipated clones becomes the freaky fulcrum for a dimension-hopping, time-travel fable set over a millennia before Takahide Hori’s original subterranean stop-motion animated opus, “Junk Head.”
THE CAST – Atsuko Miyake
THE TEAM – Takahide Hori (Director/Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 104 Minutes
The fact that film is a visual medium presents itself as both a blessing and a curse regarding Takahide Hori’s “Junk World,” a prequel to his 2017 parvum opus “Junk Head,” if only because the mad scientist behind both is so immersed in his world that no one else could properly understand it. The Japanese animator’s first feature – itself based on the director’s 2014 short of the same name – chronicled a rebellion led by a clone workforce, one that moved societal infrastructure underground in an effort to rebel against the man who created them. “Junk Head” is a film that wears its creative ambition on its sleeve, not dissimilarly to the armbands worn by the soldiers that march throughout its narrative, but one that appears only slightly curious about the deeper meaning of its story and the fact that there is one to tell at all. That “Junk World” is a fitting companion piece; it is admirable, yet it might also confirm its architect’s limitations.
In terms of artistry, Hori lacks very little: “Junk World” is set a full millennium prior to Head, and features the same stop-motion brilliance that made its future-set predecessor look and feel like “Robot Chicken” had bathed in battery acid (with a dash of sociopolitical relevance sprinkled in for taste). There’s just not a great deal of “there” there beyond the trappings, a calling card that Hori undoubtedly knows is the primary draw to his films, yet can’t seem to excel in the necessary craft of telling a compelling mutinous tale. In “Junk World,” the clones of its director’s initial creation set off in search of an anomaly that may or may not have ramifications beyond the bounds of their dimension. The many possible futures that present themselves in the aftermath of this quest aren’t the sorts that Joe and Anthony Russo might salivate over, but persist as more existential quandaries that threaten the lives of these increasingly-sentient robots – if you can call them that – and the humans that dwell among them.
Where Hori’s worldbuilding falters – if not outright rejects the notion that it can expand on its fundamental ideas – could be reduced to the rudimentary fact that TIFF’s programming team viewed “Junk World” as a proper entry in the festival’s annual Midnight Madness section, a grouping of films that never fail to explore satire, yet scatter themselves across the hypothetical dartboard in terms of effectiveness, accuracy, and above all, interest in hitting the bullseye. Walking away from “Junk World,” unconvinced that it has much to say about its plethora of ideas about governance, authority, and/or the future of our semi-functional society, feels like a foregone conclusion once Hori introduces religious allegory and the faulty rise to power of one of its main characters into the fray. Yet you’re bound not to “walk out,” if you will, thanks to the picture’s relentless attention to detail and, perhaps, out of respect for the fact that its animation team worked their fingers to the bone in order to make “Junk World” feel like a realm worth visiting for 104 minutes. (If not a lifetime, for you’d have to lack a brain to submit yourself to such torture.)
The film’s inclusion of behind-the-scenes footage in its closing credits goes to great pains to show its work, a not entirely manipulative move that is included to sell the merits of the work that goes into a film as obsessively designed as this one. But the precision that is lacking from a storytelling perspective only allows “Junk World” to travel so far into its subterranean setting, an aesthetically detailed community that is desperate to make up for its lack of substance with its appearance. This is a feat if not a triumph, and if Hori’s goals are to master the art of making the former, he’s well on his way. But as much as film is reliant on visuals, it should be equally as invested in the yarn its images are spinning. Otherwise, as is the case in “Junk World,” the spool ends up existing as a myriad of loose ends on (or under) the floor.
