Bodysong

Moving from the micro (spermatozoa advancing on an egg) to the macro (Earth suspended in space), this first feature-length work from acclaimed animator/experimentalist Pummell offers an exhilaratingly fresh look at the human experience. Boasting a fine score by Radiohead's Jonny Greenwood, it's essentially a montage of archive footage sourced from a century of cinema and television. It's structured primarily according to the chronological progress of the human body, but also includes a few well-chosen detours into sex, illness, conflict, religion, art and politics. In sum, it embraces both individual and species, physics and metaphysics, body and soul. The images are enthralling, of course, but what lifts the movie above the picturesque if intellectually stunted posturing of such superficially similar projects as Koyaanisqatsi are the imaginative, witty and revealing links used to thread them all together. Fascinating.