SOPHIE’S PLACE
Contrariwise, a contemplative movie like this one presents “nothing” in terms of action while the soundtrack presents a state of restless passions and associations.
It’s important to keep this in mind while view-
ing SOPHIE’S PLACE (1986), the 86m animated feature on Disc 3. (The title appears to be a take- off on William Styron’s novel SOPHIE’S CHOICE.) The opening credits explain that Sophia was the Greek goddess of wisdom, the love of whom is embodied in the word “philosophy,” and then we’re off on an epic of stately animated collages whose working principle was evidently for Jordan to take what he had at hand and make it up as he went along. A woman in purple, with her back to us, peers through binoculars at various astonishing sights that often involve the transformation of bal- loons, coffee cups, and various geometrical and anatomical phenomena. The sphere-headed lady also reappears; either of these, or both, could be Sophia. In keeping with the Greek motif, there are classical statues. We see not only old engravings and illustrations but also photos (such as the mo- tion-studies of Eadweard Muybridge) and even motion pictures (a dancing lady from a Thomas Edison film). In the liner notes, Fred Camper ob- serves that the artist’s method combines the
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cinema’s twin impulses toward documentary and Méliès-like fantasy. All this dazzling plotlessness, scored by what sounds like Balinese gamelans, adds up to another meditative “nothing happens” movie, albeit in glorious colors. SOPHIE’S PLACE may not show up on many lists of great animated features of the ’80s, but it deserves such consideration. Jordan’s own notes from the Canyon Cin-
ema webpage: “A culmination of five years’ work. Full hand-painted cut-out animation. Totally un- planned, unrehearsed development of scenes under the camera, yet with more ‘continuity’ than any of my previous animations, while meditat- ing on some phase of my life. I call it an ‘al- chemical autobiography.’ The film begins in a paradisiacal garden. It then proceeds to the in- terior of the Mosque of St. Sophia. More and more, the film develops into episodes centering around one form or another of Sophia, an early Greek and Gnostic embodiment of spiritual wis- dom. She is seen emanating light waves and symbolic objects. (But I must emphasize that I do not know the exact significance of any of the symbols in the film any more than I know the meaning of my dreams, nor do I know the mean- ing of the episodes. I hope that they—the sym- bols and the episodes—set off poetic associations
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