Let's set one thing straight right from the start: Daft Punk, as an electronica band, is without peers. Their music greatly influences, and some would argue, defines an entire genre. This is not in contention. However when an audience member is overheard saying "I want to shoot myself in the face" after a screening of your directorial debut, it might be time to rethink your ambitions as filmmakers.
First, a brief word on the venue. Electroma was presented by the Creative Alliance at the Patterson in Fells Point. After paying the five dollar admission fee, I was directed towards the ominous-sounding "back room," where a few score aluminum chairs were arranged in front of a slightly wavy projection screen. Not exactly the OMNIMAX, certainly, but not terrible for an art flick.
All the cool kids were there, with their lopsided hair, their laceless shoes, their striped shirts, their ear plugs. I was glad I wore my techno hat. One poor fellow missed the cred boat and actually wore a Daft Punk shirt.
Surveying the crowd proved much more interesting to me than the opening 30-minute preview for a documentary of filmmaker David Lynch as he made indie flick Inland Empire. Little did I know the wry Lynch would prove much more gripping than my heroes of techno.
Finally, or so I thought, Electroma began. The experimental movie chronicles the quest of two robots to become human. They live in a world populated completely by other robots, where every face is hidden behind a mask identical to that of one of the two heroes. It was not a terrible idea for a movie. But there were some issues.
First of all, there is no Daft Punk music in this movie. The music was fitting forgettable, unlike the music-driven Interstella 5555, an animated featured for which Daft Punk provided the music and inspiration. The mostly mellow music was a letdown for previous Daft Punk fans - that is, everyone in attendance - who are used to deliveries of bass-driven orgies of electronica. Indeed the lack of original music from Daft Punk had one moviegoer lamenting, "That didn't have a [expletive]-ing thing to do with Daft Punk!"
Also notably there is not a word of dialogue in this 74-minute film. The decision to exclude dialogue was not damning in itself, and indeed the cleverness with which the relationship between the robots is wordlessly developed was very impressive.
More frustrating were the shots of the robots during their journey. Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christos (that's Daft Punk) apparently wanted to emphasize the length of the robots' journey. And boy did they ever emphasize it. Some shots - that's more than one, mind you - would consist solely of one or both robots walking through the desert or along railroad tracks for about three minutes. After the third time, one wants to shout, "Ok! We get it!" By the fifth time or so, it is excruciating.
Some of the scenes are indeed beautiful and moving. When the robots visit a high-tech facility to get prosthetic human faces, the room and nearly everything in it is completely, blindingly white. The robots themselves and a few devices are the only things which provide any contrast - many of the workers appear only as white outlines against the robots' leather clothes.
During a slightly clich?? (and long) zoom-over desert scene, an unequivocal "natural" image of a explicitly sexual nature materialized. Though it likely was to have some sort of deep meaning (rebirth, perhaps?), it elicited many a chuckle from the supposedly hip, mature crowd.
The robot heroes, predictably, do not fare well in their quest. The poor Robot Number One eventually becomes so dissatisfied with his quest, he has Robot Number Two activate his self-destruct mechanism. Thankfully this is no collapse-in-a-heap self destruct, but rather an impressive explosion. This sequence, with the wordless but obvious conflicting emotions of Robot Two, is probably the most redeeming part of the film.
The idea for this film was a good one, but there was simply not enough material to fill 74 minutes. I can envision this same film being cut to 10 or 15 minutes, set to an original Daft Punk song, and thus becoming one of the greatest things to happen to music videos since thriller. However with no Daft Punk music, no words and never ending, pointless scenes, I join with one of my hipster row-mates in saying, "I'm surprised no one walked out."
