Imagination combines stop motion animation techniques with live action drama. It is the tale of two gifted yet challenged young female twins. The gifts come in the form of heightened intelligence and, more importantly, a heightened imagination. The challenges they face include near blindness for one, and the rare mental condition Asperger syndrome, which is similar to a form of autism, for the other. These things cause the young twins to develop a bond beyond that of normal sibling ties and escape into a world of repetition, art and fantasy that only they can perceive. With their parents stressed to breaking point a Dr tries his best to understand and treat the twins, but it may be that their imagination is the best place for them to be.
The film is the combined work of Eric and Jeffrey Leiser, themselves artistically gifted siblings. Eric is a stop motion animator (and directer of this film) and Jeffrey a composer (he also co-wrote the film with Eric). Imagination takes its influence from a mix of sources particularly the avant garde school of film making and the works of Czech stop motion master Jan Svankmajer (Little Otik). The animation is wonderful as you would expect and not just the figurines, the earthquake scene is a simple looking yet fascinating. However the live action parts of the film give mixed results, the acting while not bad, feels more amateur theatrical than it should. The shots are set up nicely they can at times feel wasted. As the film switched between live action and animation it can be slightly jarring as well. However, these are things those of you used to watching films produced on a tighter budget will probably be able to understand and forgive. I must admit the stop motion would be the draw to a film like this for me anyway. A mention must be given to Jeffrey Leiser's outstanding score, the music is beautiful and really compliments the animation. In some of the live action scenes the aural outshines the visual.
Imagination does, I feel, suffer from unstructured creativity to some degree and the dramatic does feel slightly retrofitted to the animation and music. This does meen the film lacks a certain cohesiveness, but it does make up for this buy being genuinely interesting and covering ground rarely if ever explored in film. Esoteric and at times surreal in nature, avant garde in execution, Imagination is certainly a film those interested in something "more" from moving images should seek out.
www.myspace.com/imaginationfilm
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