Chattanooga Film Festival 2022
Justin Tomchuck, also known as you ma m.i., has created Interface. This “feature” debut is a compilation of all animated web series into one cinematic adventure. It is indeed an adventure. The film is both narratively and experientially. It follows Henryk Niebieski (and his non-speaking) grandson, Henryk, on his quest to find Henryk’s great-granddaughter.
Although the animation is digital, some scratches and blips can be seen when viewing an older film print. The appropriate sounds accompany these scratches and blips. But more than that, the silent moments of the film can also be heard in the soft, scratchy sound of the film being played. The film’s world is already in disarray, and the form pretends to be analog before it even takes place.
It is also a flat, two-dimensional animation. However, it occasionally breaks down into three dimensions to let the camera move around the film’s world. As the shadows adjust to the camera’s placement, these movements highlight the excellent shadow work in the film. It would help if you also considered that surfaces and movement can alternate between being choppy and fluid depending on the scene. Water, in particular, can be either one or the other.
This unusual form is ideally suited to the bizarre story that begins when Henryk, sitting at a bus stop waiting, is approached abruptly by Mischief. He appears as a noodly, octopus-like creature without a central body. He slaps Henryk with his cigarette, then explains that his body was destroyed in 1943 during a military experiment. Then he transforms into a bus and invites Henryk to go.
The film builds its world and story to introduce “immaterial cerebral electricity,” which Mischief is made from or affected by (a few things in the movie aren’t entirely clear). KAMI, a cerebral electricity cop, functions as a Blade/replicant Blade Runner character (in the Blade Runner 2049 meaning) who can harness this power to hunt other Blade Runners.
The story is relatively straightforward from there as Henryk, Mischief, and KAMI search for Henryk’s great-granddaughter. It takes some diversions. These are understandable given that the film started as a web series. However, the film doesn’t care about narrative momentum. These vignettes are all exciting ideas, funny jokes, or visually thrilling sequences. The Interface is more of an atmosphere piece than a sci-fi thriller, despite its straightforward plot.
