Immortal Blu-ray features poor video and solid audio in this poor Blu-ray release
New York City, year 2095. A floating pyramid has emerged in the skies above, inhabited by
ancient Egyptian Gods. They have cast judgment down upon Horus (a falcon-headed god), one
of their own. With only seven days to preserve his immortality, he must find a human host
body to inhabit, and search for a mate. In the city below, a beautiful young woman, Jill, with
blue hair, blue tears, and a power unknown even to her, wanders the city in search for her
identity aided by a doctor who is fascinated by this mystery of nature. Reality in this world has
a whole new meaning as bodies, voices and memories converge with Gods, mutants, mortals
and extra terrestrials. Stunning visual effects meld with poetic surrealism of comic-book creator
Enki Bilal's fantastic epic story. A ground-breaking step into the future of film-making.
One of the dominant cinematic trends in this soon-to-be finished first decade of the 21st century
has been the emergence of CGI as not only a supplement to the traditional filmmaking process, but
also as a storytelling medium in its own right. While much of the CGI fare has been geared toward
kids—though you could argue that Pixar's productions are truly for everyone—more mature films
have also envisioned the "digital backlot" as a means to explore previously un-filmable subjects,
using actors shot against greenscreen and months upon months of tedious post-production. Robert
Rodriguez, an early proponent of all things cutting-edge, brought Frank Miller's Sin City to
life thanks to startling black and white digital backdrops. In 2004, both Sky Captain and the
World of Tomorrow and the Japanese-produced Casshern offered heretofore-unseen
interaction between live action characters and artificial environments. That same year, French
director and comic book artist Enki Bilal released Immortal, a fitting example of how the
medium is only as good as the storytelling that it serves. In the case of Immortal, the
muddled and ultimately pointless plot is matched by CGI that looks like it came from a videogame
cutscene circa 1999.
I wish I could say this isn't what it looks like, but this is exactly what it looks like.
Loosely based on Bilal's "Nikopol Trilogy" of graphic novels—and only loosely adherent to anything
resembling a
coherent, meaningful story—Immortal is a trainwreck of a sci-fi film, with, to continue
the analogy, severed ideas and bled-out symbolism littering the tracks of the narrative like
mangled bodies. It's the year 2095, and New York City is run by a company called Eugenics, that,
you guessed it, practices eugenics on the populace. Inexplicably, a giant pyramid appears over the
skyline. Inside, anthropomorphic forms of the Egyptian gods Horus, Anubis, and Bastet—I kid you
not—play Monopoly. Yes, the board game. We're told that Horus (voiced by Thomas M. Pollard)
has been condemned "by his peers" to die—though we're never told why—and that he
has seven days to basically hang out in the city and experience the world that he helped
create.
Like any self-respecting death/rebirth deity, Horus figures that now is the time to sow his wild
(and divine) oats. In his quest for a suitable host body—I mean, the guy can't walk around town
looking like a hulking, nearly naked Fabio with a falcon's head—Horus kills several potential
candidates before finding Nikopol (Thomas Kretschmann), a former political prisoner who has
been recently unfrozen after 30 years in hibernation. Now possessed, Nikopol tracks down Jill
(Linda Hardy), a blue-haired medical enigma who has the healthy internal organs of a 3-month-
old. Obviously, her womb is capable of carrying Horus' uber-potent seed. Acting through Nikopol,
Horus essentially rapes Jill—thrice, only the last two times are apparently consensual—in an
attempt get her preggers with a baby deity.
Some other things happen—a hybrid human/hammerhead shark with metal teeth tries to hunt
down Nikopol, Central Park becomes an "intrusion zone" that may or may not be the portal to a
parallel universe, and a mysterious no-faced character named John frequently shows up—but the
central act of the film is Horus raping Jill. It's not graphically portrayed, but it is unsettling simply
because there are really no consequences, for either party. Horus gets to be reborn, and Jill is
given a magical pill that will turn her into a real human and make her forget all her traumas.
Mythology is filled with rapist deities—see Zeus and Leda or Hades and Persephone, etc.—but I'm
not sure what Enki Bilal is getting at in this modern reiteration. That same sense of confusion
persists through the entire experience. And yet, this isn't a "deep" film with some carefully
embedded meaning. It just feels like rote regurgitation of half-hearted philosophy, cherry-picked
mythology, and visual cues taken from dozens of better sci-fi films, from Brazil to The
Fifth Element and Blade Runner. There's simply no unity or reason to the film's
scattershot ideas.
The lack of coherence spills over into the film's willy-nilly use of CGI. Nikopol, Jill, and Jill's doctor
Elma (Charlotte Rampling, with a ridiculous haircut) are played by live actors, but the rest of the
cast is comprised of not-quite-photorealistic avatars for whom the term "uncanny valley" must
have been invented. In theory, the decision for whether a character should be live action or CGI
seemingly comes down to whether or not that person has had any genetic or body modification.
It's a choice that at least makes some sense, though several of the CGI characters would've been
much better and more fully realized if real actors had been cast instead. All of the models vary in
consistency and levels of detail, as if several dozen animators were set to work without ever
having the chance to consult with one another on a unified look for the film. The animation is
stiff and the facial movements vaguely creepy, but the human actors aren't much better.
Granted, they're given some truly dreadful—and dubbed—dialogue to work with, but Thomas
Kretschmann and Linda Hardy are about as vacant and unconvincing as their digital brethren. I
wish I had a few good words about Enki Bilal's weirdo sci-fi film, but the best I can do is call it
harebrained and very occasionally visually interesting.
Okay, you say, maybe the film is terrible but it should at least offer some stunning high definition
imagery, right? Unfortunately, no. Immortal shall live forever on Blu-ray with a
1080p/AVC-encoded transfer that's dull and indistinct. I'm not sure if it's due to the compositing
process or some post-production blundering, but Immortal only looks marginally better
than a poorly transferred standard definition release. Overall clarity is remarkably soft; textures
are mucky and undefined, edges are blurry or else ringed with heavy black outlines, and fine
detail is only middling in even the sharpest of the film's close-up shots. Though I'm not sure, I
honestly wouldn't be surprised if the picture here had been upscaled. I'm assuming the softness
is an attempt to make the actors blend in better with the CGI backgrounds, which also accounts
for the artificial grain that's been layered over the digital shots and that sometimes contrasts with
the natural grain from the 35mm film used on the live action elements. The film's color scheme
is appropriately bleak, with a predominantly grayish-bluish-greenish cast that's only broken up by
fleeting flashes of strong color, like the man-shark's red skin, Jill's crazy blue hair, or the green
haze inside the bar. Black levels and contrast are adequate, but don't expect a vivid, eye-popping
picture. As you'll notice from the screenshots, the image has been windowboxed on all sides,
presumably to protect from televisions that over-scan. On your television, the black bars may or
may not be visible.
Okay, you say, the film is terrible and the picture quality is beyond bland, but Immortal
should at least contain a decent audio experience, right? On this point, I'm obliged to partially agree,
as the film is given a Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track that proves to be the sole highlight of a
package filled with low moments. For a movie filmed entirely on a so-called "digital backlot,"
Immortal has a fairly lively soundfield that's populated by immersive ambience and crisp,
clean sound effects. The surround channels don't exactly clock overtime, but you will hear hover-
cars racing through the rear speakers, along with public service announcements, impressionistic
audio flourishes, and place-establishing noise. I was at times impressed by the film's dynamic range
(although, in hindsight, I was probably just looking to be impressed by something,
anything), which encompasses a surprising amount of LFE rumble and a clear high-end.
The dialogue, however, is a mixed bag. The dubbing, especially for Linda Hardy, is overly noticeable
at times, and I found the opening voice-over narration to be strangely muffled. Still, everyone is
easy to understand, even if what they're saying doesn't really make any sense. Equally baffling is
the presence of two songs by Icelandic post-rockers Sigur Ros, who should know better than to
attach their music to such a monumental failure of a film.
The Making of Immortal (SD, 30:32)
Here, we're taken through the many technological processes required to bring comic book artist
Enki Bilal's fractured vision to the screen, from the character design and early animatics, through
rotoscopy, motion capture, green screen backgrounds, composites, and final post-production
touches. Along the way, we meet many of the animators and designers who worked on the film,
who all comment on the brilliant mind of Enki Bilal. I dunno, maybe he bribed them.
Special Effects Featurette (SD, 10:52)
Considering how the making-of documentary is nearly entirely focused on the film's special
effects,
this featurette is incredibly redundant.
Trailers
Includes standard definition trailers for Sukiyaki Western Django, Blood
Brothers,
Cyborg Soldier, and War, Inc.
Immortal is a movie that has Egyptian gods playing board games in a pyramid above New
York, half human, half shark hybrids swimming through sewage pipes, and bizarre three-way sex
between a human, a pixyish, pale-skinned waif, and a falcon-headed deity. If it sounds like the
premise for a truly mind blowing cult sci-fi film, well, sadly, it could've been. Instead,
Immortal is a dull and aimless procession of empty-headed ideas, all rendered with CGI that
wouldn't look out of place on a Nintendo 64 cartridge. This is misguided sci-fi at its worst, feigning
poeticism and profundity, but offering only an incomprehensible mess of half-assed symbolism and
repurposed mythology.
First Look Home Entertainment has announced that they will bring the Morgan Freeman and John Cusack film 'The Contract' to Blu-ray on October 28th. Also revealed is that they will bring both the 2008 remake of 'Day of the Dead' and the 2004 Belgium film 'Immortal' ...
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