Tropical Depression Movie Night

"Interesting Ball," directed by the Daniels

I met the Daniels (Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert) when they screened a few of their videos/shorts, including Interesting Ball, at the Always for Pleasure festival in New Orleans in 2015. They were extremely nice. Now they’ve swept the Oscars this year for Everything Everywhere All at Once. Wild.

Interesting Ball (twelve minutes) has some tonal similarities with EEAAO: wildly surreal visuals, a strong sentimental streak, self-help voiceover, and at least a passing fancy for concepts in physics, reduced to metaphor. Unlike EEAAO, though, it has no commitment to narrative in the traditional sense. EEAAO could feel bewildering, but Interesting Ball is much more so, I would say. You just gotta roll with it. Or bounce.

I have no idea how much of a kernel for EEAAO the Daniels had back when they made Interesting Ball (first released in late 2014), or whether the feature felt like a bit of a return to some of the ideas of the short. But watching it again now, it feels like Interesting Ball has kind of a music-video-intense distillation of some of EEAAO’s themes—like packing the long burn of the film into a firecracker that goes off in your face and causes a slapstick-comic wound.

I am the sort of asshole who typically likes a weirder short better than the fully realized feature, but even I can’t go there with Interesting Ball and EEAAO. There is a layered, cohesive quality to EEAAO that lets its emotive currents transcend the gags. Interesting Ball doesn’t cohere; it’s content to splatter.

As a warning, this is a weird and ultra-vivid experience that won’t be for everyone. There is cartoonish violence and also cartoonish butt-related gags, so skip if that’s not your thing (and I would say Not Safe For Work).

But if you like the Daniels, as I do, check it out.