Issue 65 (2019) |
Stanislav Sokolov: Hoffmaniada (Gofmaniada, 2018) reviewed by Mihaela Mihailova © 2019 |
An art-house puppet film based on classic literature is an ambitious (not to mention rare) undertaking in this day and age, but in Stanislav Sokolov’s Hoffmaniada, commitment to traditional animation craftsmanship has paid off. The Soyuzmultfilm feature—not an adaptation in the strictest sense, but more of an improvisation on a theme—combines elements from four works by E.T.A. Hoffmann, “The Sandman,” The Nutcracker and the Mouse King, The Golden Pot: A Modern Fairytale, and “Little Zaches,” along with material from the Romantic author’s own letters and journals. The film’s protagonist, Ernst (as in, the young Hoffmann himself) is a government clerk by day and composer by night. As the young man attempts to overcome the drudgery of his office job by working on his opera Undine and daydreaming, his fantasies begin to take over his life, gradually merging the two.
The fragmented narrative and the constant blurring of the boundary between fantasy and reality—together with the key roles that some of Hoffmann’s most enduring characters, including Sandman, Serpentina, and the doll Olympia play in the narrative—all render Hoffmaniada a bit opaque for those unfamiliar with the author’s work. However, the story of an aspiring artist getting lost in—but also ultimately uplifted by—his own inventions and dreams remains compelling, and the mirroring of the imaginary and the real captures the essence of Hoffmann’s own Romantic obsessions in visually stunning detail. The result is auteur cinema meets bedtime story—a tad bewildering, but nevertheless an enchanting fairy tale that should fascinate both young and mature viewers, albeit for different reasons.
Indeed, the film may be inhabited by magical creatures, but it is a distinctly adult fantasy, and not (only) because certain shots may prove a bit too haunting for the youngest viewers. Here—as in many of Hoffmann’s tales—the truest horror arises not from the phantasmagorical monsters that lurk in the dark (as inventively disfigured as those puppets are), but from a very familiar sense of entrapment within oppressive labor structures and stifling social obligations. In one scene, the other clerks working together with Ernst—whom he calls “office rats”—appear to him to grow tails. In another, the protagonist is dwarfed by an imposing bookcase with dusty tomes as large as his torso. As the puppet buckles under their weight, his desire to escape to far-off lands ruled by magicians rather than magistrates feels all too familiar.
For animation fans less invested in Hoffmann or the film’s exploration of the tensions between bureaucratic and creative labor, Hoffmaniada’s major draw may well be its exquisite stop-motion work. While the film contains some drawn animation and computer-generated effects, Sokolov relies on handcrafted puppets to bring Hoffmann’s world to life. Traditional stop-motion animation is one of the most labor- and time-intensive filmmaking processes and, in Hoffmaniada, the dedication and craftsmanship involved in creating such an intricate and atmospheric puppet world is on full display.
The animators’ skill is evident in the fine touches that make Hoffmaniada’s world feel authentic and alive, albeit tinged by the fantastic. A careful viewer will notice the attentive handling of surfaces and textures, from the peeling wallpaper in Hoffmann’s room to his scratched-up old mirror and the uneven surface of an old bridge, some of its stones jutting out. Even liquids, such as the foamy texture of beer head sliding down the edge of a stein, or the grease dripping down a pig’s ribs roasting over an open fire, seem to flow organically in this stylized miniature world. The same attention to detail, no matter how miniscule, characterizes the animation itself. Even the smallest movements—including the rustle of the leaves in a tree when the protagonist sees Serpentina for the first time and the ends of a woman’s apron strings swaying smoothly as she tucks a frightened child into bed—are captured faithfully, adding an extra spark to this strange world.
And yet it is the film’s distinctively uncanny puppet design—credited to artist Mikhail Shemiakin—that stands out from the very first seconds of its runtime. The sheer variety of puppet models is impressive in its own right, but so is the consistency of style and the inventive use of caricature. Almost all the puppets sport large, crooked noses and intricate powdered wigs, neatly tied with tiny ribbons. This gives their faces a birdlike quality that, in some (like Ernst) appears almost endearing, but in others (like the hideous bureaucrat who takes credit for his work accomplishments) serves to externalize their monstrous natures. Within this stylized aesthetic, a number of memorable designs emerge. A donkey-faced man often appears to Ernst to behave like the animal in question; Olympia’s creator sports two tufts of black hair curving upwards from his temples like horns; a long-suffering peasant woman, her sunken cheeks and ashen complexion as telling as any dialogue, is bent nearly double under the weight of her cargo. The result is an almost overwhelmingly rich cast of bizarre characters of all shapes and sizes, further elevated by extremely detailed, finely textured period-appropriate costumes.
Hoffmaniada’s sets complement the costumes and puppet designs in creating a world that blends eighteenth-century Central Europe with the fairy-tale lands of the Romantic writer’s imagination. In his daily life, the protagonist roams along streets lined by stylized, crooked houses leaning into each other, all sharp, Caligari-esque angles. In his all-consuming reveries, he visits high-pillared magic castles, their undulating surfaces more reminiscent of Gaudí’s facades than Prussian architecture. Here, too, the film switches between registers effortlessly—the unnerving splendor of Gothic structures gives way to the muted bureaucratic dreariness of government offices, only to be swept away by the glimmer of magic gardens.
Hoffmaniada’s evocative lighting elegantly accentuates both the mundane spaces of Ernst’s everyday life and the lush landscapes conjured by his imagination, from the fuzzy, dreamlike semi-darkness of his study to the soft cotton fog of his mystical Atlantis. At times, the film’s lighting—much like its set design—takes its cue from the classics of German Expressionism. For instance, a shot of the Sandman’s lumbering figure descending a staircase, his shadow looming against the wall, mirrors a famous scene from F.W. Murnau’s Nosferatu (1922).
Such allusions are not arbitrary; of all animation techniques, stop motion is arguably the most innately conducive to horror and dark fantasy thanks to the inherent uncanniness of puppets. Sokolov takes advantage of this, creating memorably grotesque characters like his hulking, bushy-eyebrowed Sandman who transforms from a grey worm to a jowly, grumpy villain. At times, genuinely sinister imagery, such as the Sandman’s hand emerging from the sand-filled insides of a piano, recalls the darker undercurrents of Hoffman’s tales.
The visual style of Hoffmaniada will likely tempt some viewers to compare the film to the eerie stop-motion fantasies of Tim Burton (the Gothic-tinged Corpse Bride in particular) and Henry Selick (The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline). While Sokolov’s film does share certain elements with these films—such as their embrace of caricature, their darkly evocative set designs, and their mixture of the nightmarish and the joyful—such comparisons ultimately miss the mark. Steeped in literary references, Hoffmaniada’s complex narrativeis unlikely to ever enjoy the broad commercial appeal of the aforementioned puppet features. Nor does it necessarily aim to: if contemporary American puppet films can be credited with reintroducing the art form into the mainstream, Sokolov’s creation returns it to the fold of auteur cinema.
As the end credits roll, Hoffmaniada offers its viewers a behind-the-scenes glimpse into its own production process—a practice recently popularized by American stop-motion studio LAIKA, whose puppet films traditionally feature similar mid- and end-credit “making of” scenes. From initial character sketches to the minute frame-by-frame adjustments of the puppet’s limbs by Soyuzmultfilm animators, the painstaking labor behind this phantasmagorical love letter to Romantic literature briefly takes center stage. It is a fitting postscript for a film that, at its core, celebrates the beautiful madness of the creative process.
Mihaela Mihailova
University of Michigan
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Hoffmaniada (Gofmaniada), Russia, 2018
Color, 72 minutes
Director: Stanislav Sokolov
Lead Animators: Alla Solov’eva and Ekaterina Rykova
Scriptwriters: Stanislav Sokolov and Victor Slavkin
Puppet design: Mikhail Shemiakin
Music: Sandor Kalloś
Editing: Veronika Pavlovskaia
Cinematography: Igor Skidan-Bosin and Aleksandr Vikhanskii
Voices: Vladimir Koshevoi, Anna Artamonova, Aleksei Petrenko, Aleksandr Shirvindt, Pavel Liubimtsev, Slava Polunin
Production company: Soyuzmultfilm, with support from the Film Fund
Release (RF): 11 October 2018
Stanislav Sokolov: Hoffmaniada (Gofmaniada, 2018) reviewed by Mihaela Mihailova © 2019 |