Heavy Traffic

Heavy Traffic is a wild ride of a movie. It's not very accessible or intelligible but it's rather fascinating as one man's delving into his own history and imagination.

Doubtlessly a very personal movie. Sort of like 8 and a half if 8 and a half was made by a graffiti artist. A lurid and grotesque affair, itself like a piece of graffiti splattered on an inner city wall. It is deliberately unlovely in its caricature of urban life complete with racial stereotypes, italic mobsters and bizarre transsexuals.

There's not much plot beyond these episodes of life and that's the point. Gradually the film becomes more about two alienated individuals, a cool black prostitute and an unsullied Jewish Italian Cartoonist, transcending differences in ethnoreligious background to try and make something in this bleak world even if it means being as brutal as everyone else is. I feel the usage of stereotypic images of black people, gays, jews etc. Helps even a tolerant viewer break into the mindset of people at this place and time where the colour of your skin and whether you wore a cross, crucifix or a 6 pointed star meant everything about who you are.

There's a certain lyricism in the way the movie is handled; the way that one can try and find beauty of sorts even in the ugliest of back drops and that's what I like most about the movie; it's an artist genuinely putting a piece of themselves on the screen with less regard about how many people like it but who likes it. It's ambitious and stylized but strangely unpretentious about it since it does nothing in half measures where we meander from sordid realism to daliesque bizarrity with a kitsch twist.

The trailer was spot on: "it's funny, but it's not a comedy; it's animated but it's not a cartoon". That sums it up pretty well.

This didn't charm me the way some other of Bakshi's movies did but often a movie is an oblique view into the mind of the maker. Here we've had a chance to get more or less a full view.

Heavy Traffic is, like many of Ralph Bakshi's films, a like it or hate it affair, but for those that respond to it, the film provides many a surprising attack on sensibility, decency, and what it means to get by in urban sprawl. It's almost too personal; one can see Bakshi or friends of his having gone through some of the little things in the lower ranks of New York City's daily life (particularly Brooklyn life) as depicted here. But it's this connection to a personal reality- and then a TOTAL adherence to turning this reality on its head and making it as wild, violent, and sexually deviant as possible- that is the key to the success of Bakshi's film, the best of his I've seen so far. His main character, Michael, is probably loosely based on himself; a young, would-be underground cartoonist who lives with insanely irate parents (Italian father and Jewish mother), and interacts with the neighborhood he's in with a casual attitude and a little reluctance to join in the mayhem that goes on with such kooky cats. Enter in Carole, a black bartender who won't take s*** from anyone, who teams up as a business partner, more or less, with Michael to first get cartoons off the ground, then, so it goes, misadventures in prostitution. It all leads up to an ending that isn't expected, though a sort of double-piling of shock and pleasant surprise.

Heavy Traffic outlays Bakshi's outlook on life in a skill that could be called animated exploitation film-making. However, it's through this overloading of characters *meant* to be unattractive, sexually piggish, wretchedly racist (and, on the other side of the coin, sexist), and violent in the tradition of the Looney Tunes cartoons with the worst taste, that the film gets to the guts of the matter. It's a half-embrace, half-attack on a lack of values in a society, and as Baskhi relishes in his excess, he also is criticizing both himself for lapping it up and those in the neighborhood for being such eccentric mother-f***ers. And, as a satire should be, it's very funny, occasionally uproariously so. Scenes like Michael being pressured to get it on with the girl on the mattress on the roof, and the outcome as a sort of running gag; the scene with the song Mabeline playing, as Baskhi puts out drawings that are without much color, and look incredible for the reason that there's seemingly little effort put into the animation with the random over-the-top sexual positions; the little bits in the feuding with Michael's parents, the mother with her Jewish-star knife-holster and the father with his dedication to the "Godfather", who eats little people in his pasta, over anything really with his family; and when Michael presents "religious" cartoons to a dying old man, which to any prurient Christian taste is hilariously offensive and, well, cool.

Bakshi is so personal at times, with his taste in color schemes, in over-lapping images with film clips, combining live-action and animation (usually with dancing ladies on one side and a lurid little twerp gawking on the other), and even likely real family photos from his own family laid in, that it levels going too far. There's a tendency for self-indulgence, however not always the bad kind, if that makes sense, and one can see how the film can and has been vehemently criticized for what it is really trying to criticize in the film. But deep down, past the creative madman in Bakshi, is also a heart; his film ends on a touching note, as abstraction turns real and a totally live scene reveals another level to Michael and Carol, as real outcasts who are both totally stubborn, and somehow meant for each other. Heavy Traffic is a one-of-a-kind affair, and the kind of under-the-radar act of an outrageous spectacle that it could only be done in the 70s. Grade: A-

I just saw this for the first time on DVD. It's an excellent transfer.

Heavy Traffic must've been controversial back in '73, and caused quite a splash. But I really don't see why. This is a case where, if the movie had been made completely as live-action, no one would mention it today. The rambling and sometimes incomprehensible plot, extremely stereotyped characters, and subtle-as-a-Mack-Truck "social commentary" would've consigned this to a celluloid footnote.

Some of the animated sequences are clever, but without a strong plot and good characters, I found them to be interesting, but not compelling.

Heavy Traffic is only known by the hardcore Ralph Bakshi fan base and the occasional art house folk, but not by much else. Its probably due to its notorious stamp of an X rating and its inclusion of countless ethnic stereotypes that led to its obscurity. Don't be fooled, this is not a porno. It was only given the rating due to its raunchy humor, which back in 1973 was considered too edgy for the masses. It's no different than what Family Guy is doing now on network television. As far as the racism is concerned, it's brutal, but outdated. Every ethnic person In the film represents a familiar joke or stereotype of the time. Now, the movie itself is a triumph. Truly an underestimated piece of artistic genius from one of the greatest minds that has ever drawn a cartoon. Ralph pours his culture, anger, sadness, laughter and happiness into every frame of this film. Almost to a biographic extent. He considers it his favorite project, and its obvious why. From the music, to the animation, Heavy Traffic proves that its more than a cartoon, but a microcosm of urban life in the cruelest decade to live in it. If you can get past it's lack of political correctness, it's a great flick.

Can anyone give me one single reason why anyone should watch "Heavy Traffic"? I think it may be the worst film I've ever seen, and I'm saying that without a shred of hyperbole.

First, the animation: I know a lot of people find it charming, but it stinks. Yes, there are a few good sequences and some clever parts, but 95% is just crude and terrible. It's something that would have been much better if put into live action. Why animate something when it would be easy to show it live?

Second, the story. Where the hell is it? An "underground animator" (how cliche) hates his life and then goes out to become a pimp? Are you kidding me? There is no semblance of plot or logic. I know it's a "fantasy world" and all but that doesn't forgive Bakshi of not having any kind of plot whatsoever. A pathetic excuse for a script.

Thirdly, the stereotypes. Gays, blacks, Jews, Italians, the handicapped, everyone is fair game. And while I wasn't offended by these creations per se, I just found them lazy and uninteresting. Is there anything that separates Bakshi's Jewish mother from any other stereotype of a Jewish mother that you've ever seen?

I found this film a complete waste of time.