Les Bêtes

In the 1910’s, Polish-Russian filmmaker Ladislas Starevich pioneered the use of stop-motion animation in his films. While working for the Museum of Natural History in Kaunas, Lithuania, Starevich wanted to make a film about the battle of two stag beetles, but he found that they would pass out or die from the heat of the lights as he filmed. His solution was to use their corpses instead, replacing the legs with wire and attaching them with sealing wax so that they could be articulated, and so the first animated puppet film was born – Lucanus Cervus (1910).

In the years that followed, Starevich made a couple of dozen more films using dead animals, including The Beautiful Leukanida (1912) which even featured a plot inspired by the story of Agamemnon and Menelaus. Today, Starevich is regarded as the grandfather of stop-motion animation, with both Terry Gilliam and Wes Anderson citing him as an influence, and a host of films from James and the Giant Peach (1996), to Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) and Tim Burton’s entire animated oeuvre showing that they obviously owe a lot to Starevich’s visual style.

Now, with Les Bêtes, writer, director, producer and animator, Michael Granberry openly affirms that his new short film is inspired by the works of Starevich and as such features a host of animals and insects and melded grotesqueries as its main characters. The creatures have come together for their carnival at the behest of a magical rabbit who holds the keys to open doors to other realms, and he takes them on an adventure to entertain a wicked king and his court.

Everything’s going fine until the court, and in particular the jester, realises that the king is not so entertained, and so give themselves free reign to trash the festivities and even destroy some of the players. All Hell breaks loose, carnage ensues and the rabbit opens one last door, with catastrophic results.

Considering that Granberry’s film consists entirely of repurposed models from dead projects which have been recycled into what was intended to be a ‘zero-budget’ movie, everything holds together really well in terms of structure, style and story. Some of the models had been in storage for nearly twenty years and were starting to decay, so Granberry knew it was time to use them or lose them, no matter that the projects they were originally created for were so disparate and unconnected. The idea of a ‘carnival of the grotesque’ works really well, with all the different monsters and creations able to be integrated into the storyline without much difficulty, and the fact that Granberry knew this was the last gasp for some of the models seems to have freed him up to take the story to some pretty dark places.

The score from Lito Velasco is full of carnival rhythms and off-beat percussion which deliver a real sense of unease as the horror of the drama unfolds, and the decision to film in black-and-white, although a practical one, really adds to the idea of keeping-in with Starevich’s visual style while adding an extra level of darkness to the narrative – something that is contrasted in the last shots of the film.

To say that Les Bêtes is an incredible technical achievement would be a gross understatement. The number of moving parts in just one frame of this eleven-minute film is absolutely mind-boggling, and for Granberry to have come-up with and created Les Bêtes on his own, over four years, for almost no money, is simply staggering. There is a macabre delight in watching the creatures get one final flight of fancy, and knowing that this was also the ‘last Hurrah’ for a lot of the models just adds to the poignancy of a lot of the visuals.

Les Bêtes will be able to dance its way into even the blackest of hearts, offering shock and delight in equal measure as the gruesome carnival plays out. The film is a testament to the animation and filmmaking skills which have stood the test of time and which need the human touch to be delivered, with these immediately imbuing Les Bêtes with a heart and humanity which is so sadly missing from the intense CGI affairs of today. For those looking for imagination, originality and a damn good time from their films, Les Bêtes opens the door, and your mind, and takes you to places you’ve never seen before.