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By: Martyn Pedler
Date: 6th Jun 07
Format: Cinema
Mood: Nostalgic
Where:
ACMI, Federation Square
When:
Limited season June 7 - 10
How much:
$13 from ACMI Box Office or here
Contact:
8663 2583
Watch the trailer:
here
Win:
Thanks to ACMI, we have 2 double passes to give away to the Sunday 5.30pm screening. Just email win@threethousand.com.au with the subject line ‘My plasticine head would not melt in this weather'
The last movie from Parisian duo Daft Punk was 2003's Interstella 5555, a musical lovefest featuring tracks from their album Discovery and a hefty dose of Saturday morning Robotech nostalgia. Now comes Daft Punk's Electroma, which replaces anime-fulled joy with a kind of brooding, apocalyptic melancholy.
What immediately separates this from the vanity-project hell that most band-films occupy is that Electroma doesn't feature Daft Punk's music. The music it does use - Brian Eno, Curtis Mayfield, Todd Rundgren, and more - is used sparingly, with long bursts of silence between. In fact, the entire film is free of dialogue, and when you consider that the stars are robots incapable of facial expressions? Buster Keaton would be proud.
As the heroes drive a car (with vanity plates that read "HUMAN") across a future California, the open spaces of the desert at night, the lack of dialogue, and the perfectly-placed soundtrack create a surprisingly emotional experience. Its running time of just over an hour means that every moment is packed full of striking imagery and heavy, heavy hearts; you'll need the big screen of the cinema to truly feel the weight of it.