The Raftman's Razor

Wow. I saw this short right before seeing Jan Svankmajer's new film 'Lunacy'. And they were both probably the best films I've in the entire festival, maybe the best films I've seen all year. I've have no idea where this film came from or how it started out, but it rocks, I hope there's more where this came from! I guess it could be classified as an art house comedy, similar to something like napoleon dynamite with animation that looks like something Daniel Clowes would draw up. But seriously, this short is very smart and funny, and it looks like it was a lot of fun to make in the process. The mundane has never been so interesting.

THE RAFTMAN'S RAZOR is about two very strange teens who love a rather surreal and pointless comic by the same name. Unlike normal comics, this one is the ultimate in boredom and made no attempt to entertain the audience--yet the boys became huge fans because of this! Despite nothing happening for page after page after page, the boys were devoted to every last panel--even though almost every single panel featured nothing happening and no dialog.

This is an amazingly dull short film but also manages to be oddly compelling--no small feat to say the least! In some ways, it's like taking all the quiet and uninteresting scenes from NAPOLEON DYNAMITE and condensing them into only about 7 minutes. Fortunately, had it lasted any longer than 7 minutes I would have probably fallen asleep! Odd and hard to describe but still almost interesting--sort of like I felt when watching Charles Kuralt.

The narrator recalls a time as a child when he and his friend became hooked by a new type of comic-book super hero. The Raftman is a monthly comic that is the same on a monthly basis. The comic opens with a man asleep in a raft surrounded by water. He is alone in the raft with nothing other than a shaving kit and razor, which he uses every month while thinking a single thought. After that it is 30 pages of him just lying in the raft. Their parents can't see the appeal but the boys themselves are hooked.

I'm not entirely sure what the meaning of the film was but to me it did harken back to a time in childhood where we get into things with a passion and seek out things that perhaps set us apart from other groups while bonding our own group closer. I'm not saying that was in the head of the makers of this short but just that this was the period it put me in mind of and, although I have not described it particularly well, I did think that it convincingly captured a period that I experienced. The tale is engaging in the same way as the comic is to the protagonists as the viewer wants to know where it is going.

Both the "real" story and the comic held my attention and it was just a shame that I couldn't connect to the meaning of the ending or else it would have been a lot stronger to me. I can guess that it is about the importance of things to children while just being "cool" to adults, however I'm reaching and I do think it must have come from personal experience with the writers.

Overall though, it is a cool and well delivered short film with an interesting and engaging premise. The setting is convincing and the animation is cool and inventive.