Inhumanity on screen
A Bug's Life
Directed by John Lasseter
Disney
Now screening at all major cinemas
Review by Stuart Klawans
The technique known as CGI is a Frankensteinian art, as unsettling to consider as it is difficult to pronounce, the full name being "computer-generated imagery". Dark thoughts begin to stir as I ponder its utility to the forces of capital.
Skilfully applied, the technique creates an illusion that three-dimensional objects were present before a camera, though the producer never had to deal with anything so unruly as an actor. In fact, by dematerialising film-making, CGI replaces actors, props, sets and costumes alike, substituting a single electrical flow for them all. So much for the supremacy of human presence.
These being the early years of CGI, its essential lifelessness is still visible, betrayed by the resemblance between computer-generated "flesh" and moulded plastic. That's why, knowing their limits, the cannier practitioners choose to depict characters that already are plastic or wood, like the protagonists of Toy Story. Equally suitable are those beings that have an exoskeleton. Such are the carapaced swarms of A Bug's Life.
Here's the hero, Flik: an ant with a slick blue body and eyes like ping-pong balls. When first seen, he is busy harvesting grain, using a contraption that resembles a strap-on chain saw.
Flik, you see, is an inventor — further evidence of his harmony with the powers that formed him. Other ants may shun technology, but our leading bug tinkers on in a spirit of optimism, just as you'd expect of a joint creation of Disney Enterprises Inc. and Pixar Animation Studios.
And yet, all the corporate power in the world, backed by all the microprocessors, cannot wipe out the need for people — a whole anthill's worth of sketch artists, layout artists, character designers, animators, modelers, shaders, renderers, editors, musicians, computer wranglers, voice-cover actors. The more technologically sophisticated the film, the faster these worker ants seem to multiply.
Maybe that's the reason for the happy surprise: far from being a soulless exercise in techno-greed, A Bug's Life jigs along cheerily, celebrating not only Flik's ingenuity but also such un-Disney-like virtues as eccentricity, urban disorder and the revolt of workers against alienated labour. Thanks to director and co-director John Lasseter and Andrew Stanton, and to heaven knows how many of the people labouring with them, A Bug's Life turns the fable of the ant and the grasshopper into an allegory of class struggle.
Wasn't it Marx himself who compared the industrial worker to a caterpillar, condemned to spend its whole life spinning the cocoon, so that it can never turn into a butterfly? Just so, as A Bug's Life begins, we discover the ants stockpiling grain for their overlords, the grasshoppers.
All summer long they labour for others in terror, piling up surplus value, then rush with the last of their strength to gather a subsistence wage in the few days before winter. No ant pauses to imagine that the masses might buck the system, winning the benefit of their own toil — no ant, that is, except Flik. With a rolled-up leaf as his backpack and a dandelion's head as his glider, he floats off toward the city, determined to find some big, tough bugs who will help the ants to victory.
A Bug's Life is the second recent outburst of six-legged Marxism. The first was that other insect animation, Antz. In Antz, restive workers literally speak of seizing the means of production. Then again, they imagine their leader will be Z, an ant with the voice of Woody Allen, which ought to tell you the uprising will be brief.
Distracted by the boasts and promises of a military leader — at times, Antz is harshly realistic — the proles abandon their fight, leading to a climax that cries out for vulgar Marxist criticism. Proposing communitarian drivel in answer to the workers' problems, Antz returns its characters to the usual grind — as if these beings should accept their "natural" misery, just because they're insects!
I'm glad to say A Bug's Life is not only funnier, livelier and better-looking than Antz, but also more consistent in its politics. It also lets you see the bad guy get eaten alive — but I'm getting ahead of the story.
Having reached the city — a wonderland of cereal-box skyscrapers and tin-can saloons — Flik becomes so bug-eyed with excitement that he mistakes a ragtag circus troupe for the warriors he'd hoped to recruit. The performers, for their part, are so desperate for a meal that they never ask Flik exactly what he wants. Off they fly to his island village, thinking they're going do a road show for the hicks.
In A Bug's Life, anatomy isn't destiny, it's show business; and so the performers — caterpillar, spider, stick insect, gypsy moth, praying mantis, ladybug, dung beetle and a pair of chattering whatzits — come off as proud freaks.
Push a few kids out of the way and step into A Bug's Life, where you'll have the delight of seeing the troupe's not-quite split-second act. You'll also get a rousing world-music performance from the anthill dwellers, an exciting chase through raindrops as big as bowling balls and a climax in which you face the ultimate horror: furry, cheeping, yellow baby birds.
All this, and the revolt of the masses too. It's enough to make you greet CGI with Flik-like optimism.
[Abridged with permission from the December 21 issue of The Nation magazine. For subscription information, write to PO Box 37072, Boone, IA 50037 USA. Portions of each week's Nation can be accessed at <http://www.thenation.com>.]