'Ruben Brandt, Collector' is a Masterful Animated Pastiche of Fine Art, Classic Cinema, and Surrealist Visions [Review]

There are no unintentional strokes on Milorad Krstic’s moving canvas “Ruben Brandt, Collector,” a 2D animated feature so densely ornate with auteur-adoring references and eye-popping design, a single viewing would only serve as an insufficient introduction to its bona fide, one-of-a-kind panache.

Handpicking personal favorites from the world of fine art and classic cinema, the Slovenian-born, Hungarian-based painter and multimedia artist conceived a magnificent lesson in reinventing influences as fresh cultural artifacts for the benefit of his neo-noir narrative. In appropriating these pieces, the purpose was not merely to produce a collective homage, but rather to elicit meaningful transformation for the assembly of a masterful pastiche.

Geared towards an adult audience, Krstic’s extraordinary debut was produced in Hungary with a cast of local actors recording the original voice track in English. In a pensive tone, Iván Kamarás interprets the title figure, Ruben Brandt (a composite name taken from Peter Paul Rubens and Rembrandt), an unorthodox psychotherapist famous for treating deviants with atypical obsessions, but who is himself tormented by Kafkaesque nightmares involving 13 celebrated paintings from illustrious virtuosos.

Botticelli’s “The Birth of Venus,” Duveneck’s “Whistling Boy,” Warhol’s “Elvis l and ll,” and Vincent van Gogh’s “Portrait of the Postman Joseph Roulin,” are among the two-dimensional entities that invade Brandt’s unconscious for puzzling reasons only enlightened when his upbringing is acknowledged. Materializing as monstrous visions, the bizarre rendezvous—at museums or in his sleep—maximize the already stylistically ambitious animation.

Unbounded from all conventions of reality, shapes and colors roam free to form characters with a varying number of eyes, flat bodies, sharp-edged faces, and a potpourri of distorted features in unnatural shades. Their DNA is found at the intersection where cubism and surrealism meet, mutate, and adapt to Krstic’s avant-garde imagination.

Over two decades prior to the eruption of ideas that gave birth to “Ruben Brandt, Collector,” the director had exhibited his abstract intuition in the 1995, Berlinale-winning, animated short film “My Baby Left Me,” where shape-shifting limbs, mouths, and objects contemplate erotic pleasures. The aesthetic through-line proves indelible, like two twisted peas in the cognitive pod of an artist with ingrained curiosities.

“Posses your problems to conquer them,” preaches the mental health professional, never looking inward to adhere by the same mantra. It’s femme fatale Mimi (Gabriella Hámori), a stunt double turned skilled thief, who takes it literally and persuades Brandt to rob world-class museums of the precious oeuvres to procure peace of mind. To that end, she enlists his patients, a trio of resourceful men with sordid pasts. One dazzling heist after the other, the world-trekking band of misfits not only collects ill-gotten valuables, but resentful foes eager to stop “The Collector,” as Brandt and posse are baptized by the press.

For all its deliciously intellectual fanfare, excitement is not lacking from the hypnotizing frames. Mimi first appears on screen in an action sequence so enthralling it could induce car-chase envy in blockbuster franchises that fall short of such fluid energy, intricate acrobatics, and breathtaking intensity. She glides through Paris swerving, jumping, and astutely escaping her pursuer, detective Mike Kowalski (Csaba “Kor” Márton)—the movie’s straight man longing to learn more about his father.

Besides its function as a riveting set piece, that cops vs. robbers scene elucidates the sheer magnitude of the film’s unrestrained genius. Each background character, setting, cutaway, and all minuscule production design touches carry subtext either related to the duplicitous plot or Krstic’s fascination with the creations that make him swoon in admiration. He is, through the making of this bravura collage, a collector sharing his treasures.

Tinged with genre tropes and red herrings in true reminiscent fashion, “Ruben Brandt, Collector” is not weaker for its uncomplicated inner workings. What the movie achieves visually—invoking the greats and translating their impact into animated brilliance—requires a solid, understandable base, so that its highly sophisticated hand-drawn verses written in digital paint can be louder.

Filmmakers constantly steal from pop culture and their predecessors with the loving intention of using their greatest hits, both musical and dramatic, to accentuate their own enterprises. Kristic does it here too with ubiquitous tracks like Radiohead’s “Creep,” Britney Spears’ “Oops!… I Did It Again,” and Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” all played in melancholic, jazzy versions. The metamorphosis is so drastic it takes a second to identify what one’s listening to.

Symbolic items (“The Maltese Falcon”), iconic scenes (“Pulp Fiction”), and even the likeness of director Alfred Hitchcock (present in ice cube form), undergo similar manipulation for a greater purpose: an idiosyncratic masterpiece comprised of fragments ripped from other masterpieces before it. Cleverly, and in a gracious to gesture the audience, the credits include a bibliography noting all gems saluted.

“Ruben Brandt, Collector” is essentially a glorious cinephile’s playlist and a graphic syllabus on art history encased in a thriller. As such, it merits being counted as one of the decade’s best and most wildly original animated triumphs and one of this awards season’s most unforgivable snubs. Time, the most reliable judge when it comes to art, will give Milorad Krstic his due praise. Soon enough, his picture’s neurotic protagonist will himself be an inspiration for other artists that defy simple classification. [A]