Title: American Pop (1981)
Director: Ralph Bakshi
Review:
I’ve reviewed a couple of Ralph Bakshi’s animated films here
on The Film Connoisseur and I’ve noticed how they all have a couple of things
in common, first, they are very street, always about the struggles of the
working class against the system. They are about the hustlers, trying to
survive in this big bad world. The counter culture always works itself into his
plots somehow. The nature of the animation is always sketchy, but very much
alive. His cartoon characters, though animated caricatures, are always laced
with reality, a reflection of society. Music also plays a big part in Bakshi’s
films, it almost seems to be symbiotically entwined with his animated images.
So does dancing, and the Jewish people. American Pop has all these things and one
added element that is seldom found in a Bakshi film: coherence!
American Pop is an epic animated film that spans various
decades and four generations of a Jewish family. From the very beginning, the
family we follow always leans towards the entertainment world, towards the
music, towards the performing arts. “It’s the music I love” says one of the
main characters at one point. We always follow the male of the family, from generation to generation, each generation
confronting a stumbling block that doesn’t allow them to reach maximum
potential, that doesn’t allow them to be who they really want to be. These are
all talented characters in their own way, but be it drugs, or marriage or war…something
always seems to get in the way of art, of getting that big break in life, of
making it big. Will someone in the lineage ever truly make it?
Gotta give kudos to Bakshi here, this is, I’m pretty sure,
one of his best films, if not his best one. I’ve yet to see more of his films
because some are difficult to get a hold of. But if I’m to judge his body of
work by what I have seen, I’d say that American Pop is Bakshi’s masterpiece. It’s
his best structured film, it seems focused and with a purpose, something I never
got with Fritz the Cat (1972) which is kind of scattershot and surreal. American
Pop has a feel of someone who wants to tell a clear story, to make a point and
I loved that about it. Out of all of Bakshi’s films, I’d say this one has the
most control over storytelling and the best written one. I loved how the film
is structured, how we go from generation to generation seeing how each confronts
the society of their time, be it gangsters or the Second World War, or drug
addiction and the counter culture. We go from family member to family member
until we finally meet the most driven one, the one that’s destined to make it
no matter what, “the chosen one” so to speak; the one for whom all the stars
aligned. The film made me think about generations of my family and what we have
collectively achieved.
Bakshi’s characters all have these realistic movements and
gestures because almost the entire film is ‘rotoscoped’, which is an animation
technique where they film the live action performances and animate over these
performances; not unlike today’s motion captured performances, in fact,
rotoscoping is the grand daddy of the motion capture technique. The result is
that the animated characters have very realistic gestures and movements. But
still, if the performances and the movements that are rotoscoped aren’t any
good, then your movie won’t be any good either, just look at the mess that is
Cool World (1992) to see what I mean. What amazed me about American Pop is how good
the performances where, you almost get a feeling like American Pop could have
been made live action and it would have been just fine. These characters are
alive! They got attitude, they got things on their minds and they are going to
say them! There are some tragic moments that will pull your heart strings and
there are very sweet tender moments of love and human connection that will get
to you. There’s this scene where one of the characters falls in love with a
dancer, and without saying a word they both know they want each other; what
amazed me about the scene was how we get all this not from dialog, but from
animated images that transmit these ideas and emotions without a single word.
At the same time, American Pop is also about the evolution
of American music, hence, the title of the film. We see American Music go from
big band, to jazz, to hippy rock, to
punk, to the birth of rock and roll, to every kind of music you can think of.
We go from Ira Gershwin to Bob Dylan, to the Doors, to the Mamas and the Papas,
I tell ya, this soundtrack is truly
amazing. So many awesome bands and songs, this is a soundtrack you will want to
have. There are many things that make American Pop the pinnacle of Bakshi’s
abilities as a storyteller and a director. It is an ambitious decades spanning
story that will get to you in the end, and for this and many other reasons you
can discover when you see the film for yourself, I wholeheartedly recommend it to lovers of
animation, but also to those who love their films entwined with emotions and
real characters that suffer and feel; characters that never give up and in the end, triumph. This
is truly a criminally underrated piece of animation that should be viewed and
spoken about a hell of a lot more.
Rating: 5 out of 5
4 comments:
Heard good stuff about American Pop. Will be watching it soon - preparing a little Bakshi marathon.
Good to hear that this is a Bakshi film with a strong story for a change.
Yeah, this was always my complaint about Bakshi's stuff, how it felt disjointed, but I think this one benefited from having a good script written by Ronni Kern, he hadn't written much before American Pop, but has written a lot of television and straight to dvd after he did American Pop. I think this is what gave it it's coherence, because most of Bakshi's films previous to American Pop, he'd written himself.
Apparently writing isn't Bakshi's forte. I think it worked wonderfully for American Pop, because this way he could just syphon all of his strengths on directing and animating.
Hope you enjoy it Jack.
The hideous cover for this DVD made me avoid this movie for years. My wife is a fan of all things Bakshi (and American animation outside of Disney) so when I saw your review, I thought I'd rent it despite my reservations. American Pop is a truly great film. I really enjoyed it. One problem: Bob Seger. Really? All that buildup and Bob friggin' Seger? I was super disappointed.
Glad you enjoyed it Richard, sorry it took me so long to answer but sometimes replies avoid me! But yeah, American Pop is a great film, so serious, so epic, so dramatic for an animated film, I was surprised how much emotion they could convey through the aniamtion. Bakshi's best in my opinion.
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