Sweet bite of life

Animated documentaries are hardly new.

The 2008 Oscar-nominated film Waltz with Bashir was a fine early example, a dark and compelling depiction of the 1982 war in Lebanon from the vantage point of director Ari Folman, whose fractured memories of the event suggest a PTSD-induced defence mechanism.

Folman’s animation was dramatic, dark and surreal, but it also served to put a indelible pictures to events that were largely erased from history.

A ‘toon documentary in the mould of Endless Cookie, however, is something that feels new. Directed by half-brothers Seth and Peter Scriver, it’s a freewheeling trip that bounces between the First Nations community of Shamattawa in northern Manitoba and Toronto in the 1980s and ’90s, specifically zeroing in on the funky downtown neighbourhood of Kensington Market.

Seth Scriver, who made the animated 2013 road movie Asphalt Watches, was inspired to make the film by his older brother Peter, whom Seth describes as one of the best storytellers in the world.

The best storytellers don’t always stay strictly true. So it is here, where we see Seth securing funding money from the NFG (it stands not for “No f—-ing good,” Seth says). The NFB — National Film Board — did not finance the film.

The cartoon Seth flies to Shamattawa and attempts to lay down the requisite clean audio track of Peter’s various reminiscences. But because Peter shares a house with nine kids and a couple of dozen dogs, clean audio is a dream akin to world peace … or a Maple Leafs Stanley Cup win in our time.

They abandon clean audio and a planned two-year timeline and go with the flow. The constant interruptions by the kids become part of the film’s loosey-goosey texture. Indeed, the interruptions occasionally play front and centre, allowing Peter’s offspring to shine on their own.

The process of making the film, almost entirely animated by Seth, ultimately takes nine years.

The key to understanding the film rests in the Kensington Market, where the brothers’ dad operated a funky second-hand shop. This would seem to be the source of the film’s hippy esthetic, not just pertaining to animation (reminiscent of underground comic artist Kim Deitch), but to the whole narrative thread, which proceeds in the desultory manner of a stoner on a constantly interrupted mission.

And yet, a discipline is at work here. The Scrivers touch on serious themes, especially pertaining to injustices done to Indigenous people, but the tone stays philosophical, funny and affectionate.

The two main locales, Shamattawa and Kensington Market, could not be more different. One is remote, one is urban, but they reflect off each other in interesting ways. Each has a cavalcade of colourful characters and each yields a stream of oft-hilarious stories.

If a harmony exists between those two places, the film suggests, there is hope for the entire country.

randall.king.arts@gmail.com