“The Congress” is described by the filmmakers as a “French-Israeli live-action/animation science fiction drama film,” so it’s no wonder that it’s as confused as it is.
The movie is trying to wear too many hats at once, and none of them work when they’re balanced precariously on top of each other.
Writer and director Ari Folman is an Israeli filmmaker who most recently made a splash with his 2008 animated documentary “Waltz with Bashir.” “The Congress” is supposed to be an adaptation of “The Futurological Congress,” written by the 20th century science fiction god Stanisław Lem, but the similarities mostly end with the fact that both involve “tripped-out s***.”
The opening premise is that actress Robin Wright (best known for “Princess Bride,” “Forrest Gump,” and “House of Cards”) plays a pseudo-fictional version of herself. She is going to be completely “scanned” so that her digital likeness will be used to make future movies, effectively eliminating the need for actors forever.
There is some thin, preachy social commentary about the state of Hollywood and the exploitation and consumption of actors as symbols of worship, but the movie seems to get bored with its own rhetoric. It also can’t be bothered to flesh out any of these ideas, instead opting to rush out to the store to buy more hats.
One baffling reason the film has been remarked on is to praise Robin Wright’s performance.
Honestly, I have no idea why.
She does very little, and she says almost nothing. There are a lot of shots of her standing, but more often sitting, maybe doing a little staring while she’s at it. Although sometimes the camera will hold on her for a really long time while she walks somewhere.
Also, Folman’s grasp of English doesn’t appear to be great, and as a result the characters in the film speak like space aliens with autism.
It takes about 45 minutes of the film’s two-hour run for Wright to finally submit and get scanned. It’s self-indulgent, strange and only amounts to wasted time.
Viewers are quickly introduced to the children of Robin Wright, but it would be easier to become emotionally attached to house plants.
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At this point, the movie gives itself an entirely different hat and tries desperately to explain just how dang cool it is. And even though the children are intended to be the film’s emotional hook, I hope you got a good look at them, because they’re never coming back.
After a title card casually drops you 20 years into the future, Robin Wright sniffs some drugs to become animated and travels to a “Toon World” to watch cartoon people slop around and animated creatures gleefully pork each other.
There’s some kind of cartoon political revolution that the audience neither really sees nor understands, but apparently it was really important since the rest of the film’s conflict revolves around it.
Then the hats really start stacking up. ‘Toon Robin Wright stares dewy-eyed at weird stuff as people talk at her about mundane philosophical ideas: “Life is an illusion. Or is it? No, it really is. But, like, what if it’s not?” Maybe the movie is about the commodity of identity or the crushing despair of reality and the need for self-delusion. Or is it one woman’s journey to find her children in the chaos of a collapsing world? I think the hat for a lazy parody of the entertainment industry was buried somewhere in the stack, too .
The movie feels stretched too thin, like a short film strained to fill feature length, which is ultimately just as confusing considering how many themes it tries to juggle.
Animation geeks should give it a go. But ultimately, “The Congress” digresses.
Graham Gentz is a theater and film reviewer for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter at @DailyLobo.
