Consuming Spirits (2012) User Reviews

Amazing - if you can get through it.

[Silent_Larry · 8/10 · 16 January 2018]

I can't give this a proper review as it's been about 5 years since I've seen it (once), and as far as I know it is unobtainium on home video. The film (best as I can recall) bounces around through a bunch of seemingly unrelated quirky scenes and characters, with perhaps for some, only it's wonderfully bizarre animation to keep you interested. Just about the time you wonder where the hell this mess is all going, and if you should stick with it, things start coming together in amazing ways. It's a rich piece of storytelling. While watching I had the feeling I'd experienced this style before. Afterwards during Q&A, Chris Sullivan gave a shout-out to Joe Frank in the audience - that's when it hit me how much this film is like a Joe Frank radio play.

Anyway, this is "not for everybody" but if you like well crafted stories in the style of of a Joe Frank production, you should give this a shot. IF you can find it.

One of the most ambitious animated films ever

[Danoxmas · 8/10 · 30 August 2021]

You for sure will feel the 2+ hour runtime but I assure you every scene is necessary. This goes from being an impressive blend of seemingly unrelated moments to you frantically trying to connect it all by the end. The characters may be presented as grotesque puppets or just chicken scratches on smudged paper, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's an unpretty film to look at. They're animated so well and the characters/story is so fascinating you just want to hang out in this Halloween-ish looking world. Highly recommend and hope this director gets to make another film that hopefully won't take another 15 years to complete.

Genius

[fester60613 · 10/10 · 6 April 2013]

The reviews I've read about this film all mention the astounding depth, scope and variety of its animation, most mention the ugliness of its characters, and most mention the "humanness" of the story. I've not yet seen a single mention of Chris Sullivan's clear, clean and carefully crafted sound track. And - even more troubling to me - I've not seen a single mention of the screenplay. I don't recall hearing a single swear word in this film. Even Ida's dementia-fueled "inappropriate statements" about sex and female sexual anatomy are worthy of a Catholic "how to" treatise for straight couples seeking divine sanction for their upcoming nuptials. Squeaky clean. But to me, a faithful fan of David Milch's poetic and sonorous soliloquies penned for his deeply intelligent and vocally expressive "Deadwood" characters, some of the most beautiful and enjoyable aspects of "Consuming Spirits" are the sublime verbal tangents that Earl Gray takes on his radio program. Of course these are a small portion of the film - but worthy of attention, mention and emulation.

Visually stunning but slow and bleak

[aardvarktheape · 4/10 · 4 August 2023]

A poetic botanist hosts a radio show. A photojounalist drives a schoolbus and cares for her suicidal mother. An alcoholic newspaper typesetter keeps getting stopped for driving his dead father's truck, which was reported stolen. A nun oversees a mental institution. The film follows their mundane lives as their stories gradually intersect.

I sought this movie out because it was the only one on a list of underrated animation that I'd never heard of - and now I understand why! On a technical level, it's truly a marvel. The bulk of the film is done with a combination of cut-outs and miniatures, and they frequently devolve into trippy pencil-drawing flashbacks which are reminiscent of the works of Bill Plympton. 10 out of 10 for animation.

Unfortunately, the problem is everything else. The characters are aesthetically ugly, largely uncompelling, and consumed by sorrow, depravity, and death. There's also an unusually high ratio of dead deer, probably a metaphor for something that went over my head. It's paced at the speed of evolution, with the more than two-hour running time bloated by pointless scenes (like the radio host cruising the video store for pornos and repeatedly unloading groceries). Two hours feels more like five. In a bizarre J. D. Salinger-like way, practically every bit of writing that appears on-screen (and there's a ton of it) is misspelled. That was clearly supposed to be amusing, but it's actually more annoying. And speaking of annoying, the music is dreadful.

After numerous attempts, I only made it through the film because I was curious where the story was going, and it's only 20 minutes from the end (through an extended monologue) when they finally reveal exactly how the characters are all connected. Genuinely interesting twist, but by that point, I was too annoyed to be as bowled over by it as I should have been.

I hate to be critical of something that was so obviously slaved over as a labor of love, but it's really unpleasant. I usually love weird and deranged, but the aptly-named Consuming Spirits is so relentlessly slow and bleak that it felt more like a chore than entertainment.