IMMORTALSBy Attic Girl
DVD submitted by DFW
Earlier on, we have put an eye on Les Immortals, the third movie from comics artist Enki Bilal. On april 26th 2005, DFW will release three different editions : *a 2-DVD Limited Special Edition - a collectors item covered in a special digipack with an unique 3-D hologram and a full-colour booklet
*a 2-DVD Special Edition
*and a Single Edition.
The movie is set in the year 2095 in New York City. Jill Bioskop (Linda Hardy), a young and mysterious woman, is arrested by agents of Eugenics, a corporation that is making advances in creating hybrid human-clones. The company has become more powerful than the city government and is pulling the strings in society. Emma Turner (Charlotte Rampling) a doctor, who works for Eugenics, gets fascinated by Jill. Her enigmatic genetic constitution calls Emma’s attention. Jill has organs of a three months old baby, which aren’t in the right place at all, and she suffers from a complete loss of past memories.
Nikopol (Thomas Kretschmann), a revolutionary fugitive who was sentenced to 30 years in a cryogenic prison for opposing the techniques of Eugenics returns to earth. His cell accidentally detaches from the floating prison and in the fall, one of his limbs is cut off. Horus locates Nikopol - regaining consciousness while quoting Baudelaire! - cures his leg, and finds him to be the perfect host body to impregnate Jill.
Bilal extensively uses computer effects for backgrounds, effects and most of the characters. Jill, Emma and Nikopol, the real-life characters in this movie, merge really credible with the digital images, but sometimes their dialogue sounds a bit unnatural. The rest of the cast is computer-generated and in the case of Horus, the scientists or the policemen this works well. I just had a bit of a problem with the senator and his female assistent Lily, they look too different from the rest of the characters and often their lip-movements weren't exactly in time to the dialogue.
Although the movie has a straight story, it's not a bad idea to read the Bilal’s Nikopol Trilogy before watching it. If not, you might feel a bit thrown in the middle of something without any further explanation. You meet these characters, and there's a lot of mystery to them. For instance in the case of Jill, I was eager to find out where she came from, or what happened to her in the past that made her this bewildered... but I didn't get an answer. Even to a higher level, it's obvious something bad happened to the world but there's no explanation as to why or what.From an aesthetic point of view, Les Immortals is a visual treat. The artwork and the amazingly designed cityscapes are staggering. Bilal blends the past, the present and the possible future and that is what makes his graphic style so unique. You will recognise some of the old New York skyscrapers, like the Empire State Building, and their typical art deco elements (e.g. inside The Western Hysteria Hotel) which may seem too contrasting to be used in a sci-fi movie, but Bilal makes them look very futuristic and pre-apocalyptic and the same thing goes for the vehicles.
Linda Hardy, a former Miss France, was chosen to play the part of Jill and she does an excellent job. With her pale skin and blue hair she looks beautifully alienated and fragile. Jill is afraid to become human. My favourite sequence is when she visits the Man Museum and sees those magic projections of people hugging and playing together... it really moved me and the music of Sigur Ros makes the atmosphere even more intens.The special edition DVD's offer a strong selection of extra features. In The making of Les Immortals Enki Bilal
explains how he started from a 2-D storyboard, consisting of over a 1500 drawings. Technicians edited these sketches into a sort of static cartoon on which they added voices. Before the actual shooting began this projection, was used to make a 3-D storyboard. With this animated film they could start filming the actors. Most of the backgrounds are virtual and it is fascinating to learn how the various CGI and human elements are brought together through precise planning and timing.In The Making of Technical Aspects and the Documentary on the visual effects we see how the different characters were created, some of them with synthetic components and some of them in full 3-D animation. It focuses on the progress from traditional storyboards through 3-D storyboards to the final scenes. Rotoscoping, motion capture, green-screen photography and how all of this is put together, it all makes sense to me now. Duran Animation Studios developed new software to enable this project . A team of 10-20 people worked 3 years on the research and development. An early teaser, made for Cannes 2001 looks completely different from the actual movie. Technical progress contributed to a far more ambitious result than what initially was aimed at.
Being a fan of Bilal's graphic work I had hoped to see more of him drawing and creating the backgrounds and cityscapes, but this subject is only glanced at for a few minutes. Still, it was interesting to see his version of New York rising from the Manhattan street plan with the elaborated old skyscrapers as the major locations for the movie. The bonus DVD offers a lot of useful information and this is definitely a selling point.