A surreal romp through the subconscious
Short film by acclaimed director plays at Ottawa Animation Festival
The short film Subconscious Password comes from the fertile mind of celebrated Montreal filmmaker Chris Landreth.
In fact, the 11-minute film, which is in competition at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, is a look at the inner working of the subconscious mind, which in this case belongs to Landreth. The film is an esoteric and thought-provoking peek into the randomness of the subconscious and the many thoughts and images that filter through it.
It’s not an easy film to describe, as it explores what Landreth sees as the effects of aging and the mental anguish of being unable to connect faces to names. It starts out innocently enough with Landreth, playing Charles, running into an old friend at a party — but he can’t remember his name.
It then quickly switches gears and offers a dizzying montage of images from Landreth’s subconscious mind, including photos of John F. Kennedy, Salvador Dali, Yoko Ono, William S. Burroughs and even his one-time babysitter. This is played against a backdrop of the classic American game show Password, including footage of Dick Van Dyke and Sammy Davis Jr. appearing as panellists.
Landreth said the film shows a “triumph” of the brain in overcoming the inevitable feebleness of aging.
“As we go through life there are more and more people in our mental library and there’s just a single librarian in there who now has to deal with thousands rather than hundreds of people,” said Landreth, 52, who is in town for the animation festival.
“When you’re 22 you don’t know that many people, but when you’re in your 50s you have to remember more people. I go to festival parties all the time and meet people and it’s a lot of mental work (to remember people),” said Landreth, who won an Academy Award in 2004 for his short film Ryan, about renowned Canadian animator Ryan Larkin, who had fallen on hard times.
Subconscious Password will be shown Sunday at the ByTowne Cinema as part of the festival’s short-film competition series.
Produced in collaboration with the National Film Board, Copperheart Entertainment and the Seneca College Animation Arts Centre, the film has been getting some early Oscar buzz. Landreth tends to shrug off that kind of industry talk, preferring instead to spread the word about his film. Earlier this year, Subconscious Password won the Cristal d’Annecy for best short film at the Annecy Animation Festival in France. It will play the festival circuit and will also be part of a touring animation series called The Animation Show of Shows that will play throughout North America later this year.
Landreth consulted with friends who are psychiatrists about the inner workings of the brain.
“It’s a neurological miracle that our neuro-pathways can be reactivated at a moment’s notice and that you can retrieve from that part of your brain what is thought to contain the long-term memory vault of the mind, which is the hippocampus deep in the limbic system of the brain.
“The brain is a wonderful thing and I want this to come through in my film.” Landreth added that Charles, the lead character in the film, is able to get out of his messy predicament and in the end remember his friend’s name.
“I wanted it to be a joyful triumph of the human spirit. What the film is about is this absurd comedy about what I think all of us go through at one point or another in frantically trying to remember someone’s name and avoiding embarrassment. The way I kind of imagined that happening is like a game show in your subconscious mind.”
He said in 2010 he bumped into a friend at a film festival and about a week later, when he was in his neighbourhood video store, he saw reruns of the game show. So he decided to link the two events and that formed the basis of his film.
The famous personalities shown in the film are part of the lead characters’ subconscious mind and were randomly chosen, he said.
“I chose Dick Van Dyke and Sammy Davis Jr. because I think they were part of my subconscious and were guys that I grew up with. I use to watch the Dick Van Dyke Show and watch the Sammy Davis Jr. TV specials and when he was with the Rat Pack.” he said.