One
of the ironies of science fiction is the braininess of the genre’s most
speculative work is often difficult to translate on screen, so we get cheesy
laser battles instead. Imagine trying to write a screenplay based on Olaf Stapledon’s
Last and First Man. Piotr Kamler might have been the man to do it. The
Parisian-based Polish animator specialized in abstract animation, but his only feature
film was a work of science fiction—sort of. Focus on the visuals and try not to
worry about imposing narrative order on Kamler’s Chronopolis, which
screens during the Kamler retrospective now underway at Anthology Film Archives.
In
some ways, Chronopolis shares a kinship with that other “polis,” Metropolis.
This is definitely an imposing futuristic city, but the power dynamics are a
little different. The ancient immortals lounge around their luxury palaces in
the sky, creating living forms out of clay and pining for some drama to shake
up their omnipotent existences. A pair of intrepid humans scaling their ivory towers
just might do that. Or something like that.
