Inspiration

An artist sits and ponders what to do next, where he will get his next piece of creativity. As it turns out, as it typically does in the life of someone who needs to create, inspiration comes from one small thing - like a drop on a leaf - transforming (or perhaps more aptly transcending) into another form, lime little fish or sea creatures, and from there into another plane like figurines and a ballerina made of glass, and on and on.

What this makes you think and feel is that art needs to have an organic property in order to transform and change, and that organic quality, of objects being made of something that can then turn into something else, that is what is so completely and beautifully in control of an animator. It also needs to be said this all works so gorgeously because it is stop motion, and because Karel Zeman knows there's nothing he can't do, or to try, to make something like a small glass fish or a porcelain clown into a work of art. Everything we see had to be made, crafted, shaped, molded, and then utilized to bend and move for the camera frame by frame.

And there's always movement, momentum, and some kind of action that takes these figurines and shapes into the next place. This is all to say that Inspiration is a wonderful visualization of what it can be like for us creatives to work: one thing leads to another to another, and (to borrow David Lynch's phrase) you capture bunches of little fish to lead you to the "big" fish or idea. I don't know if this short has a "big fish" except that it's all little ideas, little pieces, that make up a whole glorious set (Zeman also features a flower or two, and what better metaphor than a flower that contains many facets to discover?)

The premise of this film is that there is a whole culture that exists in a drop of water. We have little colorful cities, figure skaters, and other events taking place that use what appear to be little glass dolls, in stop action. I wish I had an emotional response. I saw no story here. The idea of inspiration has to do with the imagination.

In all its beauty, Inspiration lacks to have a clear story to inspire; still, it manages to keep things up to date. Glassy imagination, keeps the dreamers among us going for quite some wet nights after seeing this one.