Robin Wright
Harvey Keitel
Paul Giamatti
Danny Huston
Kodi Smit-McPhee
Sami Gayle
Jon Hamm

Ari Folman

122 mins.
Animation, Drama, Sci-Fi
July 24, 2014

Not Rated

Ari Folman’s “The Congress” is based on Stanisłas Lem’s sci-fi novel, “The Futurological Congress.” This is especially true of the animated part in its second half. Robin Wright (an actress known for frequently eschewing mainstream projects) plays Robin Wright, an actress who starred in “The Princess Bride” and “Forrest Gump” years ago. But she’s not playing herself: Confused yet?

She has trouble getting work, much to the chagrin of her agent played by Harvey Keitel, because she has a son who needs special attention. He’s experiencing vision and hearing loss, which is getting progressively worse, and he has an obsession with planes – his last name is Wright, after all. This caused her to quit numerous projects in the past, so she’s offered one final role: to be scanned into a computer so that Miramount (a portmanteau of Miramax and Paramount) can use her likeness as it sees fit. Got it?

That’s the future of movies according to the studio exec, played by Danny Huston. They won’t be at the mercy of actors much longer – no more actors, just characters. The actors who were will become normal people again. As you can probably tell, this film provides a commentary on the soullessness of Hollywood and on the illusion of choice (actors’ choice of roles, audience’s choice of films to see, etc.).

Wright’s son does what movies in this film will soon enable their viewers to do: live in a personalized movie. (I’m doing my best here.) We’re told by his doctor, played by Paul Giamatti, that he’s aware of what he’s doing and that he’s decades ahead of his time. This new kind of movie will allow its viewers to cast actors who are tailored to their subconscious desires. These viewers will be in a grand hallucination. But will they be able to distinguish between reality and fantasy?

OK, enough of that. On to the critique: This film’s first half has a self-referential humor that works in an odd way. It’s a disjointed yet interesting half of a sci-fi drama that provides a commentary on the nature of reality via the Hollywood system.

I can’t say the same about the second half. During the second half, the story lost my interest. In comes the animation, out goes my attention span. In this part of the film, it’s 20 years later: Robin Wright needs to re-sign her scanning contract in animated Abrahama: “It’s like a genius designer on a bad acid trip.” However, Miramount wants to take things even further; it has no need for a creative team or anyone else: “Be your dream for God’s sake!”

Overall, “The Congress” is full of ideas, but they’re not really worth the time it takes to understand them. Ideas aren’t enough; execution matters. The meandering throughout the animated/hallucination section derails the whole thing.

Verdict: OK, Overall

About: (Source: thecongress)

Robin Wright, a Hollywood actress who once held great promise (“The Princess Bride”, “Forest Gump”), receives an unexpected offer in mid-life: Mirramount Studios want to scan her entire being into their computers and purchase ownership of her image for an astronomical fee. After she is scanned, the studio will be allowed to make whatever films it wishes with the 3-D Robin, including all the blockbusters she chose not to make during her career. As if that were not inducement enough, the studio promises to keep the new 3D Robin forever young in the movies. She will always be thirty-something, a stunning beauty who never grows old. In return, Robin will receive tons of money but shell be forbidden to appear on any kind of stage for all eternity. Despite her deep internal resistance, Robin eventually signs the contract , since she understand that in the economy of scanned actors, its her only way to stay in the business, but even more crucial, Robin can give her son Aaron, who suffers from a rare disorder, the best treatment money can buy. The contract is valid for 20 years.

Twenty years later, Robin arrives at Abrahama, the animated city composed by Miramount Nagasaki, once a Hollywood studio that signed Robin, and now the exclusive creator of the cinematic dream-world that controls all our emotions, from love and longings to ego and deathly anxieties. Miramount Nagasaki’s chemistry is everywhere, from the air-conditioning to the water sources. During the intervening two decades, the corporation has turned Robin Wright from a Hollywood actress with unfulfilled potential into an international superstar and fantasy. On-screen, she has remained forever young. In the animated world of the future, Miraramount Nagasaki is celebrating a huge gathering in the heart of the desert, “The Futurist Congress.” At the event, Miramount Nagasaki’s genius scientists — once creators of movies, now computer programmers who have evolved into chemists and pharmacists—will declare the next stage in the chemical evolution: free choice! From now on, every viewer can create movies in his own imagination, thanks to chemical selection. Robin Wright is now a mere chemical formula that every person can consume by taking the correct prescription, then staging whatever story they desire: Snow White, personal family dramas, or porn. It’s all in the brain, all through chemicals.

The animated Robin Wright is an “elderly” woman of 66. When she arrives at the congress as the guest of honor, no one recognizes her as the stunning beauty admired by all, a star whose image is broadcast on screens in every corner of the congress. She is lonely, about to become a chemical formula, when out of nowhere, Paramount Nagasaki’s utopian plan is suddenly derailed: the thinking man, the resister, the rebels who have been fighting the deceptive regime of the pharmaceutical world, unite and turn the Futurist Congress into a fatally violent arena. The struggle for clarity of thought becomes a war of independence for the right to imagine. Out of the forgetting and the loss, Robin suddenly regains the ability to choose. Will she go back to living in the world of truth, a gray world devoid of chemistry, where she is an aging, anonymous actress caring for her sick 30-year-old son? Or will she surrender to the captivating lie of the chemical world and remain forever young?