by Julian Wood
Worth: $14.50
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
[voices] Taika Waititi, Yolande Brown, Radical Son, Yael Stone, Taylor Schilling, Wayne Blair, Ian Thorpe
Intro:
Whatever it is, it is certainly not bland or monochrome.
The English Romantic poets drew a distinction between imagination (deeper, more transformative) and fancy (more playful and decorative). This might sound arcane, but it is a theory of art that applies directly to this heterogenous animated feature.
Imagine is rooted in the traditions and ideas of the indigenous peoples and the creatives behind it are First Nation writers and activists. Several prominent Aboriginal actors also lend their voices. Chief among them is Jack Manning Bancroft, an educator who was instrumental in forming a mentoring organisation called AIME. This organisation encourages young First Nations people to forge their way and realise their dreams.
It is fitting that the main protagonist here is a young teenager called Kim. We start with them in their bedroom being a bit bored and listless before being plucked by a magical being and taken on a voyage of discovery. Along the way, they are accompanied by a bright green and pink talking dog called Jeff. During the course of the film, they traverse various landscapes, real and imagined, and meet a few magical creatures.
Australian fauna feature quite largely, such as a giant platypus called Jack (voiced by Manning Bancroft) on whose back they fly over Sydney. The other major creative input here is from Tyson Yunkaporta, the academic and author and public intellectual whose attempt to promote the integration of Indigenous knowledge systems into mainstream colonial education have been quite influential in recent times.
The film, it has to be said, is quite odd and also quite hard to follow, especially if you are looking for an actual thread as opposed to letting it just wash over you and entertain you. The animation is mostly artfully done. It is mixed in style but is overall very vivid and brightly coloured. The film is also not overlong, which is probably a good thing as it can be hard to stay with it. Some of the dialogue is didactic and dense (not unlike Yunkaporta’s books) and it might go over the head of a younger audience.
Some of the film, for want a better word, is ‘trippy’, with kaleidoscopic transitions and shapes merging into one another as the characters tumble through different worlds. The overall effect has a slight resemblance to Richard Linklater’s Waking Life, which took us on an equally hallucinogenic questing journey towards possibilities of altered perceptions.
The script for Imagine was developed from ideas suggested by young people and that may account for the leaps of logic and loose structure. Like the shape-shifting entities depicted, the film is hard to pin down. Is it an odyssey, a fairy tale or a dreamtime story? Or all of those? Whatever it is, it is certainly not bland or monochrome. They have thrown everything at it and most audiences will find something in there that they can connect with.
