Immortel (ad vitam)

Horus Underrated

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There are Rated, Overrated and Underrated. French creator Enki Bilal's effort falls into this sorrowful category according to the onion's considerations, as this here 2004 sci-fi installment declares it's agenda in a crystal clear fashion and manages to live up to all the cautious expectations you would associate to a rather fluent high-tech fairytale. Based on Bilal's various comic strip series, Immortel depicts a 2095 New York and unleashes ancient Gods - now definite oximoron there - on a blue-gray sky. The entire movie is blue-gray, and feels rather good about it. My suspicion would be that the world population already was longing for The Revenge of the Sith when Immortel had it's theatrical release, a timing not too fortunately chosen from a marketing point of view. It is very easy now to forget about this solid flick, though you miss out on a highly defendable eye-candy effort if you were to do that. So, I urge you herein: do that not, and let us instead stare into the Eyes of Horus - regardless how this Egyptian God wears his optical organs on the side of his magnificent head. Worry not though, as his English is perfect, and he is in a talkative mood today.

Immortel delivers a sci-fi atmosphere quite similar at it's core to the visual output of another flick of French origins, the Fifth Element, though Bilal's work utilizes sane ideas to spice up elements - sic! - you already had chance to witness. This future New York also is very reminiscent of Fritz Lang's Metropolis, you know, the first major sci-fi movie, the one you can earn a living writing about. Sane ideas are of key importance if to give stable narrative purposes for an atmosphere blending components of Metropolis and Fifth Element in a rather pleasant, though somewhat shy manner. One of these particular ideas, Bilal is stupendously pride of. Or, it is more likely that he is simply constrained to it due to practical considerations. Let us elaborate.

The idea itself would be the huge, complex wire system in the air, forming a traffic route above the city that hover vehicles are able to use. In a while you can't help but notice that Bilal accounts the city primarily in the air to show off semi-static background architecture and vehicles to hover by, (uhm, it is like the vehicles are hovering by, though Immortel features a building to fly, as we will see) so it is rather fortunate that the vision is strong enough to maintain the appreciation even towards a semi-static nature of city strolls. Postcards?



To further and finally describe the environment palette Immortel delivers and takes place in, let us say you will have plenty of well thought minor interiors to support the postcard appeal, these inner portions do render a clever mix of supercautious Star Wars and modern architectural charms. The element to start things moving comes from the Sky, as one particular day some crazy-ass Pyramid invades clueless air molecules above cloud level, and we are quickly subjected to the graphic presentation of the quite significant inner events the monument conceals. Perhaps we should say computer graphical presentation instead.

Immortel gives you the rendition of three Egyptian Gods: Bast, Anubis and Horus. Of these three superbeings, Horus is the one the story will largely elaborate and sew itself upon, thus now it is a splendid time to account a brief synopsis on Immortel's narrative assumptions.



- Hey Horus, what up!
- What up!

It is not known to humanity what purpose drives Egyptian God Horus to return to Planet Earth, neither will I tell you that, as the God's agenda is to unravel only by the mid section yet serves as focal driving factor for the entire movie. One thing is certain though: he needs a human host to contain his God-Spirit as Horus's True Form would be quite enough to shock people tremendously. He quickly teams up - not as the teammate would have any choice - with an ex-convict by the name Nikopol, personified by Thomas Kretschmann. That way Horus can command and inhabit Nikopol's body, though the God is generous enough to offer some leftover of an autonomy for the human male protagonist.

Immortel uses the classic approach of intersecting two different perspectives at a certain time to establish a negotiation, thus comes your second storyline concerning a mutant by the name of Jill. She is given you by Linda Hardy, Miss France 1992. Her mutant character is highly original. Sheds blue tears that remain on skin like paint for good, can read minds like books and has a very unorthodox inner anatomy as far as the layout of her organs. She, her very being is the top-notch issue to conduct inspections on for the local scientific interests, a supportive aspect rendered mainly by Charlotte Rampling and a CG character, both are giving you researchers. It is good that Rampling got a sidekick to support her half-dimensional performance, as her current abilities as an actress are harshly limited, and seem to maximize out via the tiresome exhibition of the silly, "oh-I-know-too-much" smile you will spend watching when she is to claim her extremely boring canvas presence.

Rampling's character is deeply interested in Jill's nature as a specie, yet events are starting to take solid narrative turns when it becomes evident that Horus himself has his own plan arranged concerning the mutant. While Horus's character easily could be regarded as one of the strongest components Immortel delivers due to the God's excellent voice acting/general temper and his interesting physical buildup, other organic CG creatures of the movie did not have a pleasant time since their canvas debuts: animation is a little clumsy, the characters do possess that rubbery feel to them, the one you could see in video game intro sequences years back from today. Now those intro sequences surpass the quality of CG appeal Immortel is capable to entertain you with.

Though, interestingly enough, all this does not take away much from the good old fun, as Bilal seems to be aware how the CG characters are above-average at best, yet the director exhibits no evident intention to blend them desperately into/beside real life environments or real life persons. So one could certainly say that CG is superevident this time around, but the acknowledgement of the matter and the degree of willingness Immortel is ready to rely on them nevertheless eventually weights in as a funny trait of funny merit, opposed to source of unpleasant shock.



- Got a smoke?
- Uhm - left it inside.

Real life acting is stable without any grim moments save Rampling's ever-present, vacuous smilearounds, while the story unfolds into a nice, solid fairy tale conclusion to enrich narrative buildups keen to maintain a massively strong relation for curious ideas such as faith and pizza with triple cheese. Immortel certainly deserves credit and a refined attention for creating a world which's workings are pleasant and fun to watch, even better: Bilal had no problem offering you a time without shallow periods to compromise it. If you like easy, risk-free science fiction tales highly compatible with a bucket of popcorn and eyes eager to watch well researched, stable sci-fi environments, then this one is for you. If you don't, then you surely have had a rough time reaching this particular point in this here review. In that case, I feel for you. And so does the Horus Thing, too.



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