The long film, The Cosmic Eye, is about the discoveries of three extraterrestrial jazz musicians who look as though they might be named Squarehead, Potbelly, and Little Sponge--except that they change shape, color, and drawing style as their feelings change. They visit Earth in a wonderful seagoing spaceship; they learn some of our juicier creation stories; they worry about our wars and cruelties; they observe above all our children; and in the end they hold out some hope for us as a planet.
Sure, the politics are pat and squeaky-green, but the images--Hubley's light-saturated colors, her wildly eclectic drawing, her analysis of gesture--are ravishing. Mayan, Mogul, Ingres, Lascaux, Matisse, Uccello, Hokusai, and on and on: You almost want to hit freeze-frame. The average time an image stays on screen is less than a minute, and the Hubley Studio's trademark jiggle-mation (watch the colored shapes slither-shimmy-wiggle-scoot!) contributes to visual overload. After I saw The Cosmic Eye in the theater, I went home and watched it again on video, and the second time I understood to let the great arc of Benny Carter's brilliant score carry me forward, like the little guys in their space boat. Of course, the visuals are so degraded on video that they lose some of their insistence. I stopped trying to grasp every image; even degraded, they're too rich. It's a movie that I'll want to see again, and probably again. And yet I'm not sad that it's Hubley's only feature-length film. I think her intensity and pace work better at a shorter length.
Will your children enjoy it? Oh, I hope so. My own kids are grown, so I'm not calibrated on how soon adolescent world-weariness begins these days. Nine? Eight? And it lasts till 27, you say? Okay, leave everybody between eight and 27 at home, and the rest of you go and enjoy yourselves.
Enough about the good film, now let's talk about the great one. It's called Cockaboody, and it couldn't be simpler in concept. Faith Hubley and her husband John (who was, not coincidentally, also one of the greatest animators of all time) recorded their two daughters having a bedtime conversation. They then illustrated eight minutes of the conversation with underlit, animated, sepia-wash drawings. We see the two little girls, but like our friends the space aliens, they have become shape-changers. When Georgia screeches, her Inner Screech Cat fills her chest and jumps right out of her mouth. Emily grows taller and shorter, depending on what she's saying. A mop smiles and weeps.
I've seen this film 10 or 12 times at intervals of a year or more for the last 25 years, and I feel like I'm still barely scratching the surface. It is a masterpiece of unblinking. The distancing that comes from the drawing--the beauty of the drawing--makes it possible to bear listening, but only for a short time. In Cockaboody, the Hubleys remind me of another famous couple of their day, the linguists M. A. K. Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, who wrote groundbreaking analyses of language acquisition based on observing their own child; and also Sally Mann, the photographer whose pictures of her own children make a razor cut across every cute-kid image you've ever seen.
I can just about guarantee that your children will not enjoy Cockaboody, because it is one of the most adult films you could ever hope to see. Children are not poignant to other children. Children don't weep because other children will grow up. Children are not amazed, or filled with hope and biologically programmed joy at other children. But for an adult? Here are two little kids. Here is what they say--only eight minutes of what they say. And it means everything.
Barley Blair is the pseudonym of a little old lady who would never tell her children that she's looking forward to grandchildren.
