It’s hard to find an animated movie for adults these days. Of course this isn’t true for other countries like Japan, where animation is so mainstream and common that they can market it to everyone. Here in the US however, and likely due to the domination of companies like Disney since the 1930s, animation is and will likely always be something geared more towards children, but that's not to say there are no alternatives. Take Renaissance for instance. It’s a black-and-white science fiction film noir. It’s got recognizable voice actors to play the characters in its dubbed release. It’s violent, dark, and gritty. All this explains why it was made in France.
Set sometime in the future of Paris (and it’s once again set in that part of France where everyone’s British), the story follows a cop named Barthélémy Karas (Daniel Craig), who’s put on the case of finding Llona Tasuiev (Virginie Mery), a missing woman that had ties to a powerful megacorporation called Avalon and its shady CEO (Jonathan Pryce). The trail gets muddled and Karas soon finds himself lost in the midst of a conspiracy with world altering consequences. The story is well conceived and there are some really good ideas at play, but the first (and most important) thing to notice about Renaissance is the animation. Firstly, it’s entirely in black-and-white, and I mean that quite literally. There’s almost no gray in the entire movie. Everything is colored in stark black-and-white, creating a lot of deep shadow effects and striking visuals. It’s a really cool looking style, making the world appear as a hyper stylized cyberpunk noir, and it looks different from just about anything else I’ve seen in a movie. The use of only solid blacks and whites actually makes it resemble black-and-white indie comic books like the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Sin City (even more so than the movie adaptation). These comics used only the ink from pens to create shadow and details, and they’re known for their dramatic and extremely stylized artwork. Watching Renaissance in action is like seeing one of these comics brought to life. The only other animated medium I’ve seen that comes close to matching the visuals of this movie is the videogame, Mad World.
The animation style for the people uses a mixture of motion capture and computer graphics to create its look, but it’s the black-and-white that really gives the movie something to distinguish it from others of its kind like A Scanner Darkly, Avatar, or The Adventures of Tin Tin. The futuristic setting of Paris is interesting and very sleek and crisp, as opposed to other more famous futuristic metropolises like L.A. in Blade Runner. Everything in Paris is clean and sharp, with lots of glass surfaces, creating a very cold and sterile environment for the characters to live in. It’s well suited to the idea that nearly everything in the city is run by an evil corporation.
Where the movie’s biggest problem lies is with the protagonist, Karas. He’s a determined and relentless police officer who will stop at nothing to solve the case. All in all, he’s a pretty standard and uninteresting character, despite Daniel Craig's voice acting. You could replace him with most cliché movie cops and not much would be changed. They spend some time developing a back story for him that involved his childhood ties to a criminal kingpin, but it serves no real purpose in the plot. When his entire back story is revealed, it tells us nothing about why he is the way he is. The biggest problem with Karas is his utter lack of motivation. This guy is the best of the best on the police force, and it’s never revealed why he needs to be so good. Nothing about him explains why he should or shouldn’t make some of his decisions. His romance with Bislane Tasuiev (Laura Blanc) also comes across as flat and uninteresting as a result of this. I don’t know what she sees in him. The lack of characterization with Karas especially hurts the film when some of the major themes present themselves to him directly at the end. When the movie goes into some of the moral and philosophical matters for him to react to, the impact is severely lessened because of his lack of personal investment. I wish more time had been spent going over some of the questions raised towards the end of the film, when the mystery is closer to being solved, but instead it just ends.
It’s very nearly a case of style over substance, but I think there’s just enough here to warrant interest. Despite having a bland protagonist, the unique visuals and interesting story make Renaissance worth checking out.
Set sometime in the future of Paris (and it’s once again set in that part of France where everyone’s British), the story follows a cop named Barthélémy Karas (Daniel Craig), who’s put on the case of finding Llona Tasuiev (Virginie Mery), a missing woman that had ties to a powerful megacorporation called Avalon and its shady CEO (Jonathan Pryce). The trail gets muddled and Karas soon finds himself lost in the midst of a conspiracy with world altering consequences. The story is well conceived and there are some really good ideas at play, but the first (and most important) thing to notice about Renaissance is the animation. Firstly, it’s entirely in black-and-white, and I mean that quite literally. There’s almost no gray in the entire movie. Everything is colored in stark black-and-white, creating a lot of deep shadow effects and striking visuals. It’s a really cool looking style, making the world appear as a hyper stylized cyberpunk noir, and it looks different from just about anything else I’ve seen in a movie. The use of only solid blacks and whites actually makes it resemble black-and-white indie comic books like the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles or Sin City (even more so than the movie adaptation). These comics used only the ink from pens to create shadow and details, and they’re known for their dramatic and extremely stylized artwork. Watching Renaissance in action is like seeing one of these comics brought to life. The only other animated medium I’ve seen that comes close to matching the visuals of this movie is the videogame, Mad World.
The animation style for the people uses a mixture of motion capture and computer graphics to create its look, but it’s the black-and-white that really gives the movie something to distinguish it from others of its kind like A Scanner Darkly, Avatar, or The Adventures of Tin Tin. The futuristic setting of Paris is interesting and very sleek and crisp, as opposed to other more famous futuristic metropolises like L.A. in Blade Runner. Everything in Paris is clean and sharp, with lots of glass surfaces, creating a very cold and sterile environment for the characters to live in. It’s well suited to the idea that nearly everything in the city is run by an evil corporation.
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| Barthélémy Karas (Daniel Craig) |
It’s very nearly a case of style over substance, but I think there’s just enough here to warrant interest. Despite having a bland protagonist, the unique visuals and interesting story make Renaissance worth checking out.
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