Mad God (2021)

directed by Phil Tippett

USA

83 minutes

4.5 stars out of 5

----

I had to think a while about whether or not I wanted to even approach talking about this movie because it's the kind of thing where I can't possibly describe the scale and scope of it with words. I was lucky enough to see it on a big screen in an actual theater, which enhances the experience tenfold. Usually I'm not a puritan about what size the screen you're watching movies on is, but with this it's just basic logistics: Bigger screen means you get to absorb more of those precious details that fill up every centimeter of every frame. (It is also a very dark film, so seeing it in a theater means you don't have to stare at your grubby reflection in the iPad screen.)

Also, just a note: I'm aware that this was partially released as several separate shorts in the past, but I'm going to be talking about the movie as it was presented to me when I saw it, as one cohesive piece. I will reference the segments because you can definitely tell where the line between them is, but I feel like it was meant to be watched in the order that the full, 83-minute film is assembled in.

The first part of this film is unlike anything I've ever seen before. The whole thing is that way, really, but the beginning does not even try to ease us in; it's the most high-octane the film gets, and it sustains this pace for what must be a good half-hour or more. I was going to talk about the skilled worldbuilding here, but that's not the right word for it at all. This world is built. Everything is already here and we're in it now whether we like it or not. There is such a distinct story behind literally every object in this film that I'm surprised Phil Tippett's head didn't explode from the pressure of keeping all those narratives together. I have no doubt you could pause Mad God at any moment and extrapolate some deep and upsetting backstory from whatever is onscreen at the time. Not all of the bizarre entities inhabiting the world of Mad God play a role in the main storyline, but the storyline would be a void without them. The sights that the Assassin - as much of a "main character" as this can be said to have - walks past without giving them a further glance all help to cement the environment the film takes place in. I took a peek at some other reviews and found that there is some debate over whether or not this movie has a "narrative" - I don't believe it's necessary for a movie to have a narrative, but this one definitely does, even if the meaning of it is largely up to you to decide. And the narrative is shaped not by one overarching story belonging to one single character but by the mosaic of incredibly tiny individual pieces brought to the table by every weird and wild thing in every corner of this film.

We begin with the Assassin descending in a capsule through layers of strata composed of, again, individual objects that each tell a story even if they're on screen for half a second. Horned skulls, alien skulls, the bones of enormous beasts, discarded statues of holy figures and icons, and layers upon layers of other debris surround the capsule as it goes further and further down until it touches the floor. Very early on we see that life ("life" is a word with extremely blurry boundaries in the world of this film, but I don't feel like getting into that right now) takes all shapes and sizes, and one of the first things the Assassin does is step unthinkingly on a couple of gnomes no bigger than a fingertip who were apparently arguing over a Santa Claus carcass (it's that kind of movie). Soon we also see the Assassin walk past incomprehensibly large humanoid figures in a never-ending state of being shocked by electric chairs, and the Assassin is as dwarfed by these as the gnomes were by the Assassin's boot. This sets up what I feel is one of the main themes of the film: That there is always something bigger waiting to come step on you, that there's always a creature who either sees you as an ant or is too large or preoccupied to even see you at all. This is a backbone of many Lovecraftian works, and for that reason I at least partially classified this in my own brain as cosmic horror.

As I said, I run up against the limitations of language when thinking of ways to describe all that the Assassin encounters on their journey. Everything they see is a newly invented mechanism of suffering. A lot of the first part of the film takes place in a seemingly borderless "factory" where drones molded out of what looks like cat hair and given life produce large slabs of some material, which is obviously an incredibly dangerous job given that the drones seem to be dying by accident (or by design) by the hundreds, if not more. The disposability of life and the pointlessness of it all is what makes this environment feel like true hell. The drones toil for apparently no reason other than to produce more circumstances in which to toil. This is what everything and every being in Mad God is saying, really: Everything here is alive for no reason. There is no point. No end goal. An individual life is wholly valueless other than as a tool to maintain the circumstances in which life can continue, and it must continue in a state of pain and drudgery until the end of time. Again: Hell.

One of the most interesting revelations in this is that the Assassin is not necessarily an autonomous being but is themself a drone, sent down through some membrane into the world that they spend the film exploring by what at least outwardly looks like a human. This is, I feel, an extension of the "always something bigger to step on you" thing, and I'm fascinated by the idea of the person who was sending all these explorers down into this hell-world. It's made pretty clear that he's been sending them for ages, that enough of them have failed at whatever their mission was that there's now piles and piles of the suitcases they were equipped with just laying on the ground as waste. From the Assassin's name and the fact that they carry a bomb in said suitcase, we can infer their purpose, but - assassinate what? There is no ruler of this underworld, or at least we never get to see any. Personally one theory I came up with is that the human sending the drones is himself the "mad god" that the title refers to, and he's plumbing the depths to see if there's any other gods out there so that he can kill them and remain the sole capital-G God. This is entirely speculation, but is supported by the mishmash of religious objects seen throughout the film - Tippett does a very good job of presenting sacred items as nothing more than slabs of stone, and any sense of ritual or holiness is invented by the devout with no influence from the divine.

I'm also fascinated by the ending. As the film goes on, it approaches a point where it is, at least visually, at its least dank and crushingly hopeless. A figure with the face of a plague doctor delivers a squalling bundle, recently excavated from the chest cavity of who I think was implied to be the Assassin after being captured and failing their mission, to a smithy who pulverizes it and turns it into a fine gold dust. This dust stands out as being one of the only beautiful things in the film, though it comes from the body of a being that was entirely helpless and arguably innocent, at least in Mad God terms. The plague doctor figure uses this dust as a kind of method of divination that launches a colorful trip sequence where we see things that one could tentatively call optimism: A city is built, and through the windows of the buildings we can see not horrific acts of murder and depravity as we saw through windows earlier in the film but what look like normal things - bookshelves, people standing around. In time this city is demolished by youths spray-painting anarchy symbols on walls - not necessarily a bad outcome, but possibly the reckoning of a diseased and overgrown urban sprawl, which could give rise to better living conditions in its downfall. The visions produced by huffing dead baby dust (again, it's that kind of movie) are the only point at which things look slightly less than existentially horrific. But what is the meaning of this? How can ruthlessly killing and commodifying the remains of the film's only innocent creature produce visions of a brighter future? There's implications there that would take many, many paragraphs to unpack - and I'm going to wrap up this review here, although there is far more I could say.

The story of this film's creation is well-known: Phil Tippett along with a rotating crew of interns worked on it as a side-project to his larger film contributions (which are many) for 30 years, adding bits and pieces to it continuously to, from what I've heard, the detriment of his own mental health. Watching something like this where you know the monumental effort and time that went into making it is such a unique experience - I could not stop thinking about how the baby that supplied the doomed creature's cries could be nearing 30 years old by now. The aesthetic of the film is unashamedly lowbrow, and I love how it's not afraid to be powerfully, blasphemously disgusting. Rivers of feces and creatures that look to be composed entirely of hanging testicles are not uncommon sights in Mad God. This is not the kind of movie that everyone will appreciate thematically or visually, but as an object it's a deeply interesting reminder of the timelessness of art and a showcase of fervent dedication to one concept.