It was around about a year ago that I watched the short film The Eagleman Stag; it is a film that I greatly enjoyed and I even remembered it just from seeing Michael Please's name as creator of this short film, made several years after that one. I guess on the face of this short that the making of Eagleman Stag, or the work in the wake of that must have been much, much harder than the wonderful end product suggests, because there is a great sense of frustration and self-deprecating humor here. The plot sees a tiny floating figure acting as a god as she creates universes from the large down to the smallest detail, however the reality is perhaps not as grand as all that – indeed it may even be all a bit silly actually.
I am not an artist in any sense of the word (maybe "p*ss-artist" to use a British phrase) so I am on the outside of this joke, but the film delivers this particular bit of naval gazing in a way that anyone can understand and appreciate. The sense of frustration in Marilyn, combined with the fact that even when she gets attention and is treated as this wonderfully creative force, well, it is still silly, all this makes for an engaging and funny film. It is also pretty telling since, although I am sure Please himself is not quite to this level, these ideas clearly ring true with him to some degree. There is a great sense of the silliness of it all, including the fun translation of the overly sincere African "world" music at the end.
As the film works on this level, it still works technically, showing that even if Please thinks what he is doing is silly, then it is not something shared by the rest of us. The stop-motion work (mostly using foam and maybe paper?) is very impressive indeed, whether it be the fantasy world, or the "real" one. The movement, the freeness of the camera, and the imagination of the shot framing/structure is all great; it took me another watch – the second one just being watching it technically. Not only do I know this is far beyond me, I really would even struggle to picture how it was done.
Marilyn Myller might well represent some level of frustration or struggle on the side of Please, but if it does then it is one that is well worth it since it has produced another smart, funny, entertaining, creative and roundly impressive short film.
