A poetic botanist hosts a radio show. A photojounalist drives a schoolbus and cares for her suicidal mother. An alcoholic newspaper typesetter keeps getting stopped for driving his dead father's truck, which was reported stolen. A nun oversees a mental institution. The film follows their mundane lives as their stories gradually intersect.
I sought this movie out because it was the only one on a list of underrated animation that I'd never heard of - and now I understand why! On a technical level, it's truly a marvel. The bulk of the film is done with a combination of cut-outs and miniatures, and they frequently devolve into trippy pencil-drawing flashbacks which are reminiscent of the works of Bill Plympton. 10 out of 10 for animation.
Unfortunately, the problem is everything else. The characters are aesthetically ugly, largely uncompelling, and consumed by sorrow, depravity, and death. There's also an unusually high ratio of dead deer, probably a metaphor for something that went over my head. It's paced at the speed of evolution, with the more than two-hour running time bloated by pointless scenes (like the radio host cruising the video store for pornos and repeatedly unloading groceries). Two hours feels more like five. In a bizarre J. D. Salinger-like way, practically every bit of writing that appears on-screen (and there's a ton of it) is misspelled. That was clearly supposed to be amusing, but it's actually more annoying. And speaking of annoying, the music is dreadful.
After numerous attempts, I only made it through the film because I was curious where the story was going, and it's only 20 minutes from the end (through an extended monologue) when they finally reveal exactly how the characters are all connected. Genuinely interesting twist, but by that point, I was too annoyed to be as bowled over by it as I should have been.
I hate to be critical of something that was so obviously slaved over as a labor of love, but it's really unpleasant. I usually love weird and deranged, but the aptly-named Consuming Spirits is so relentlessly slow and bleak that it felt more like a chore than entertainment.
