Crumbs (2015)

 

Director: Miguel Llansó

Screenplay: Miguel Llansó (with translation by Daniel Worku)

Cast: Daniel Tadesse as Candy; Selam Tesfayie as Sayat; Mengistu Berhanu as the Shop Owner; Shitaye Abraha as the Witch; Tsegaye Abegaz as Santa Claus; Girma Gebrehiwot as The Man Who Listens

An Abstract Candidate

 

Miguel Llansó returns, although in this case the older title far from being advanced from actually proves to be a Rosetta stone for getting more out of the later (better known) Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway (2019). I still like the later immensely, but Crumbs became the favourite of the two immediately.

It is effectively an Ethiopian set sci-fi film, but the obvious thing to notice is how much Western pop culture is deliberately included. This could have easily been trite, like many post-post-modern illustrative artists I have seen on sites like Juxtapoz magazine that, whilst still are great illustrations, are beholden to knowing what the symbolism is. I have always worried, maybe irrationally, that especially in the modern day where "content" and "stuff" is more of a concern for companies to pump out to audiences, not dissimilar at all to the goods produced cheaply in pound stores or more expensive boutiques, whether any of this material will be left for scholars in a thousand of years or not, even that which is loved and became art to its fans. I am also someone who actually, on the opposite side to that opinion, as an admirer of Surrealism's ethos including admiring low culture, someone who would wish for even the content itself to celebrated even if just manufactured, that as long as there is a way to turn something into art, it is worth saving even if to be deliberately camp or perverse. A lot of the illustrations or art I have seen however, from the likes of Juxtapoz, whilst still good sadly still are beholden to their symbolism needing to be known with not much else between the lines, which would be a nightmare for scholars a hundred years down the line to appreciate even with context, and just an excuse for perverting brand names in surreal psychedelic imagery. Here with Crumbs however, there is something more profound in the end.

The absurdity is there. Actor Daniel Tadesse returns, and this time he has to locate Santa Claus to get tickets for the spaceship to return to his home, whilst his love interest Selam Tesfayie prays to the holy shrine of basketball legend Michael Jordan and lives in a bowling alley where it has seemingly come to life on its own will. This is film where, in terms of one-off imagery, an Ethiopian Santa Claus (played by Tsegaye Abegaz) smashing a children's bicycle in the head of someone wearing a Superman costume is something I actually witnessed and can write about. However, glacial and a road movie in its own way, there is something much more profound about Crumbs which means more.

It is felt fully when, far later in the short feature length film's narrative, we enter a cinema which has been playing a Turkish rip-off of Superman continuously. In a world where no one really remembers the past, believing a toy children's sword or a Donatello ninja turtle figurine are all artefacts of ancient warriors, this offers as much as its narrative the subtext that the artefacts we churned out on mass in our pass, whether of worth or cheap pound store junk, lasts a hundred years down the line (especially if made of plastic) and now is found by the survivors in this world. Here Michael Jackson is not the figure we have him as, controversial yet a huge mega star, but a legendary singer presumed to have been a farmer at the same time he made the Dangerous (1991). If anything, Llansó offers the perfect attitude to how to deal with pop culture in art. Name drop the material, which if you get adds new layers, but force them in a strange scenario where name or brand recognition are not the point but how these objects are reinterpreted in the environment. It is perfect in dealing with a problem, especially with this era now we have to add post to post-modernism, which is going to befall media which attempts to deal with all the culture around it that has been made and still will be.

More so as, in the other virtue of Crumbs, Llansó found enough surreality and scale in the real world. I liked Jesus Shows... immensely, but Crumbs wins out between the two for managing to find real life locations straight from a dream reality. Staying entirely in the country of Ethiopia, it is subversive and profound in itself to have this story in this country, where the cast of local actors of the territory and they get to play out a scenario with this much imagination. The manmade environment around them itself, as someone who admits to having had dreams of strange buildings made from the most banal of places like supermarkets, are just as evocative as the strange content the director-writer added himself. Railway tracks nearly to sink in the sea, the bowling alley itself is an atmospheric place where a bowling ball randomly rolls down a corridor by its own will, and there is the stunning if lived-in zoo where Santa is found. That last location, a masterstroke for the production to have found, is a vast extravagantly decorated environment found in the country of Ethiopia which offers far more production value than if made from CGI. As much as the film is deeply silly on purpose, like this being a world of a "Justin Bieber IV" existing, it both has a greater weight of imagination due to the production values the filmmaker found (or found in a discount store) but also a salient political commentary that is inherently within this material.

In this world in particularly, the apocalypse which we learn of that transpires did not really effect a lot. The metropolises and environments are abandoned, but the habitants have survived, with none of the gravity of a film set in a Western first world country like the United States saying everything would be a disaster. No one cares what has happened, and so much plastic or pot materials left after the end's wake is now more valuable than it was back when civilisation existed. The greater concern here now is being attacked by someone whilst you acquire a Christmas tree for your love one's collection of dwarf trees. Even Nazi imagery, one character wearing a Nazi uniform with Mickey Mouse ears and a gas mask, is no longer threatening in the end of the world, not even able to convince the store owner who sells artefacts the pay more by threatening him with a toy gun, and the traditional folklore and culture is still able to survive. A witch exists, and still thrives, only now she has the benefit to having a ceramic cup to drink from and little trinkets to be paid with. Even a figure like Michael Jordan now is a deity here to light incense to, rather than just the legendary basketball and Space Jam (1996) forgotten about.

It is also of note that, in a country like Ethiopia or non-Western countries, the complete saturation of our pop culture bleeding into theirs is inherently political for how it is matter of fact and has no power, merely objects in the background or trade. It evokes the film ‎Alipato: The Very Brief Life of an Ember (2016), from the Philippines director Khavn De La Cruz, in that for all its tragedy and surrealism another aspect I still remember is how, in its great production value, there was so much noticeable American pop culture (branded clothes from the likes of Pixar's Cars) among the trash and debris of its mostly impoverished or homeless cast. It disconcerts how much of the consumer goods floods of ours flood other countries, but it is thankfully not as powerful as we fear, as they will eventually become meaningless or at least not merely something to have to buy, merely symbols having to fight with others based on an individual's priority rather than what it sold to them. It is befitting, returning back to the Superman imagery here, Superman becomes a symbol of hope and virtue in this world, which would make the DC characters' original creators still proud, but that the Turkish knock-off is shown, still liable in itself to have inspired a young child in Turkey as much as the American Christopher Reeves films of bigger budgets.

Crumbs in itself, whilst also hilarious and a thing of beauty, gains a lot from this, and it now makes the more accessibly weird Jesus Shows You the Way to the Highway more meaningful as it was in this exact tone of using pop culture, taking Soviet cold war era paranoia and its pop culture and smashing it together. Knowing as well that Miguel Llansó can slow down, let you breathe in a fully fleshed out world seen in less than seventy minutes as much as throw you through the lunacy of the later film, itself is fantastic as it means he is capable of being unpredictable and entice with what he can do with this distinct aesthetic attitude.

Abstract Spectrum: Contemplative/Post-Modern/Weird

Abstract Rating (High/Medium/Low/None): Low