Renaissance

Renaissance **1/2

To describe "Renaissance," it fits into that classic saying of "all style and no substance." It has some of the best animation that I have ever seen put to film, and really raises the bar high in that department. In the other department, the one about actual storytelling, it doesn't get very far at all. Make after the success of "Sin City," "Renaissance" works like a graphic novel, telling the story in black and white, and film noirish, except animated. The future seems bleak in Paris, 2054, and so do the people living there. We follow Barthelemy Karas, a cop who has just been given a difficult assignment. To find Ilona Tasuiev, the sister of Bislane Tasuiev, who was kidnapped on her way out of a club. She wasn't a bad woman, Ilona, and one of the last conversations that she has with anyone was about how she is constantly working all the time. Barthelemy probes deeper and deepers, and discovers that the kidnapping could all be a plot ignited by the city's biggest company, Avalon, who has a new product-immortality. Falling in love with Bislane, Barthelemy's hard exterior seems softened as he hunts for whoever it was that took Ilona.

The vision behind "Renaissance" is that we have a bleak future ahead of us. None of these ideas of the future, shown through Terry Gilliams "Brazil,' or even Orwells "1984," picture us as happy campers a few decades from now. Us humans will be screwed in the near future, where everything is so dark and grim and our every single move is being watched. I really did love the choice of animation. Very much like in "A Scanner Darkly," "Renaissance" tells the story of the future in a way that we can't ever really see it. It's distorted, and shown in a non-realistic way. Our future could be anything, but the only thing that is certain is that it's unknown, which is why we can't capture a true, live version of the future. In addition, it works on the graphic novel vibe, and doesn't seem as forced as something like "Sin City." The graphic novel idea works here. It also works on the film noir element, of the dectective with a depressing past, channeling his frustrations through the mental anguish that the current case is putting him through. Simply put, the animation saved the film, but it just wasn't enough to flat out recommend the movie. My rating is more of an averge, weighing out the style of the film, and the actual method of storytelling, as well as the overall story itself. That kind of thing is important to me, and no matter how beautiful a film could look, it's nothing with a story behind it. The story was too blase for me, with very little action. It seems uninspired, not to mention that the immortality subplot seemed to come out of nowhere. It's a shame, how something that looks so groundbreaking could end up being something rather medicore. The American voice cast doesn't improve matters, as everyone doing voices seems as if they are reading their lines off tiny paper cards. I hope that Daniel Craig doesn't use the same voice here in the new James Bond movie, or he might be out of Bond before they start making the next one. I wish Miramax could have left the original version alone, and released this with subtitles. It just seemed so wooden, as if the voice actors simply didn't care about making the film.

"Renaissance" is really only half of a good movie. I could have actually looked at this film for an entire day, but I don't think I could have listened to it. The animation and stunning, groundbreaking visuals cannot provide enough entertainment for two hours. I have to have some kind of emotional investment into the story and characters. "Renaissance" failed to help me achieve this. It's really more of a missed opportunity. It is something to see, sometime in your life, especially if you're an animator or art student, but it isn't something that is important enough to go rushing out and find.