Ah Pook Is Here

It's maddeningly difficult to represent the work of William Burroughs in any visual medium, though animation definitely has advantages over regular film in this respect, but 'Ah Pook is Here' succeeds to a greater degree than most.

The short is mostly taken up by a grotesque creature, with Burroughs's voice, philosophizing while smoking a hookah. The audio seems to have been cut together from various sources subjects include Ah Pook (the Mayan god of death), Control, politics, and "stupid, greedy, Ugly American deathsuckers."

This line, taken from 'No More Stalins, No More Hitlers' on Dead City Radio, is Burroughs at his prophetical best, "...the rulers of this most insecure of all worlds are rulers by accident. Inept, frightened pilots at the controls of a vast machine they cannot understand, calling in experts to tell them which buttons to push." Now imagine it being said by a demented little creature that looks like a cross between a chicken and your spleen.

Possibly only for William Burroughs completists - the writer narrates a despairing tirade against mainstream American ills framed in a sci-fi apocalyptic context, an organic planet in a symmetrical, monochrome universe. The reassuring, lilting, pensioner's voice, the cool despair and horror of the words, Pook the turkey, Burroughs' representative, suicide as response to compromised life. The theorem-like clarity of the animation makes it watchable.

A puzzling short I saw years ago and rewatched again just recently, Ah Pook Is Here was hard to wrap my head around those years ago, particularly if you're just tuning in after not paying attention at first. But the point is fairly simple behind the surreal animation (that yes, and the detractors point out, is fairly ugly- but so are the topics it describes). From William S Burroughs, the author of Naked Lunch (and actually narrated by him), Ah Pook Is Here features philosophical riddles: "If Control's control is absolute why does Control need to control?" and "What does death need time for?" It's a short that doesn't provide many answers, but gets a point across and does what it aims to do as a six-minute short.

This is an animated short that probably will make most people shake their heads and say "huh?!" repeatedly. And, while I freely admit that it was strikingly original, it was also generally incomprehensible and rather ugly....but original!! To describe the film adequately would probably require us both to be under the influence of massive amounts of drugs--it's that strange. And so it's fitting that the film is an odd reading by William Burroughs (an on again, off again drug addict and writer).

The film begins with a world-like object made out of scrap metal (or something) and bombs and rockets flying about it. Then, out of the blue come two creatures that look like demons and chicken guts. The whole time the primary one rants on and on about bad government and why America sucks.

While there must be a lot more to it, this really is the gist of it. If you dislike America or like really weird things, then this is right up your alley. Otherwise, it is slow going and difficult--though I still must applaud the odd artistry and design of this amazingly bizarre work of art.

I must confess I'm not familiar with the writings of William S. Burroughs: I remember trying to read some fragments from Naked Lunch online when I was teen, but I found it way too confusing and random for my taste.

This short is weird, surreal and random, like those Naked Lunch fragments I read back then: It's like taking a look inside some extravagant dream or delirium, but the way in which said dream is portrayed is quite fascinating.

The imagery Phillip Hunt displays here is creative and beautifully grotesque, having a certain "timeless" feel, disregard of the somewhat dated CGI.

Maybe the only proper way to adapt Naked Lunch into film is making little surreal shorts like this one.