Film Review - Tall Tales
Images courtesy of Pivot Pictures.
The new collaboration between music producer Mark Pritchard, Radiohead vocalist and established solo artist Thom Yorke, and visual artist-cum-director Jonathan Zawada, Tall Tales, is a sumptuous visual feast that while at times disjointed, offers food for thought wrapped up in a candy-coated package. Channelling Ron Fricke’s Koyaanisqatsi, Van Gogh, and the visual absurdity of a Meat Dept. render, the audiovisual accompaniment to Yorke and Pritchard’s soon-to-be released album of the same name is a cautionary fable of man and nature in decline.
Right from the opening track, A Fake in a Faker’s World, accompanied by simplistic visuals of a lighthouse on the rocks, it's clear the goal is to warn. Warn us of our own hubris, of how industrialisation is affecting not just nature but our own psyches too. From there we are plunged into crashing waves, while a comet shines brightly overhead, and the track Ice Shelf plays. These two tracks are quite sparse sonically and likewise, the film itself starts off on a low point. If you can brave this monotony though, the film soon opens up more, blooming into a soothing yet symphonic array of sensorial flourishes.
The framing device that binds these vignettes together is a cutesy isometric 3D rendering of a little bird dude, backpack and hat on, traversing between island landmarks in a manner that recalls the level selection mechanic in the Super Mario World games. This doesn't really offer much except to emphasise the variety of themes the songwriting deals with and connect them in a patchwork quilt, spanning ecological disasters like pollution, more intimate problems like the addiction and mental health, and the effect AI has had on the world. There's much being said about the homogenisation of culture and the creative process, how pressures from all around can limit us rather than just boiling it all down to the adage of “no art without suffering”. Sometimes we suffer not for art, but because we do not have the resources or time to create it.
In this busy world, we're afforded little time to dream. We're sold someone else’s vision, whether it be something as grandiose and prophetic as Tall Tales, or as mind numbing as a new Netflix “it” series that's sure to fade from the cultural zeitgeist within a month. As Yorke states on Back in the Game,
“I'm all sobered up, starting again / Trying to walk straight but my legs cave in / It's either this or jump / if you know what I mean.”
This could be taken more literally as a fight between substance dependence and suicide, or it could be seen as Yorke attempting a new artistic reinvention, wanting to take a creative leap. I'm far from the world's most devout fan of Radiohead, but having done my fair share of weeping to his original soundtrack for Luca Guadagnino’s Suspiria remake, there is something fresh yet stripped back about his efforts on the tracklist of Tales. Likewise, I'm unfamiliar with Mark Pritchard's prior work, but his sparse electronic arrangements compliment Yorke’s timbre quite well, evoking emotions as the silky synths weave their way around the vocals, adding a layer of warmth despite the isolating content (no surprise given the project was born of 2020).
On the other side, Zawada takes a generally restrained approach to the visuals compared to the vibrant oranges, purples and pinks that accompanied the nitrous haze of Flume's Hi This Is Flume mixtape visualiser. Where his frequent collaborations with the Aussie future bass artist usually combine practical and digital elements, Tall Tales tends to go with either one or the other at any given time, almost as if to pit the natural and unnatural against one another. The visuals are still phantasmagorical, but there's a slight delicacy to them, as if they might be about to erode under the touch. Things often move in slow motion and with shallow focus depth, like a segment that features the camera being placed on a conveyor belt at an Amazon warehouse, or the finale, which sees a skeleton made of glass dancing on a boat. There's a great care put into the ebb and flow of each track and Zawada is sure not to outdo his musical counterparts with too many flashy moments.
Though I wasn't given quite what I hoped given my adoration for its director’s previous works, Tall Tales felt like I was being forced to eat my veggies. At first, I didn't like the taste, but I stuck with it until eventually I was tearing up with adoration, and the water from my eyes flowed as the watercolours onscreen did the same. Tall Tales might not be as grandiose as its title would suggest, but the real scale lies in its ambition.
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Tall Tales is screening in select cinemas, only on Thursday the 8th of May. For tickets and more info, click here.