The Congress

A thought provoking hypothesis concerning the future of acting descends into dystopian banality as Ari Folman's Congress transforms its initial personal conflict into a convoluted cultural malaise, the leap from the subjective to the universal itself profound, its execution entangled in histrionic thickets.

Computer generated cults and combines engulf the narrative's characterization in a co-opted corporate/revolutionary temporally and physically unbound constraint, which dialectically plays with animation and the corporeal to enticingly comment on a general contemporary lack of concern with poverty and alienation, the individual escapes or s/he suffers, and/or escapes and suffers, with no plan in place to improve downtrodden standards of living.

The relationship between selling your character to a studio through the process of having it duplicated by a complex array of computational codes thereafter used in whatever film the studio sees fit, regardless of whether or not you approve of the role, seems to have been commercialized en masse, individuals escaping to an animated realm to avoid finding solutions to real problems, this realm, probably representing current obsessions with the internet, which can be a remarkable tool for activism and engagement, enables individuals to become their own ideal self on the upload, leaving everything behind in the construct.

Or not. I don't know. This film's a mess. I felt like I had the flu watching its second act. I like complex takes on the byzantine nature of sociopolitical dynamics, but the acts don't communicate well with one another, there's no chrysalis, they just happen.

Without this communication, the film needs to stand tall on its own thereby encouraging you to see it again, like Mulholland Dr. or Lost Highway, and The Congress, with its misplaced animation, becomes too melodramatic and opaque, its structure obfuscating its outputs.

As an obscure piece of relevant cultural commentary it succeeds.

As an enduring film, I'm not so sure.