Watching the film Hundreds of Beavers and a product of Shakespeare’s Henry V in the same week was something of a crash course in the suspension of disbelief.
Hundreds of Beavers (Mike Cheslik, 2022) is a slapstick comedy about a fur trapper (Ryland Tews) using ever more elaborate methods to catch beavers.
Except the beavers are people in cheap beaver costumes and much of the action was conjured up using deliberately unconvincing digital effects.
Even if we allow the excuse that it’s supposed to resemble a cartoon, the quality of the animation is often so janky that it jars. More South Park than Snow White.
Does this in-your-face fakeness matter? Clearly, in this case, it’s intended to be a selling point, with phrases like “lo-fi” being used to describe what, in other contexts, might be referred to as “shit”. But whether it’s a plus point or not, it certainly doesn’t get in the way of enjoying the story.
If there’s one thing human brains are good at, it’s working with the limited information they’ve been given to create sense from chaos.
In this case, once you’ve been told a person in a beaver costume represents a beaver, and that a paper cutout style animation represents a man climbing a tree.
After all, what do you need to know to follow the story? That the man is climbing the tree to catch and kill the beaver. They could almost be represented by boardgame counters or, indeed, plain text.
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Insane Root’s production of Henry V employs similar tricks to evoke crowded, chaotic 15th century battlefields with a cast of seven, minimal sets, and a handful of props.
What’s interesting about Henry V in particular is that Shakespeare addresses the question of suspension of disbelief head on, in the text. He has the Chorus (the MC, or narrator) address the audience at the beginning of the play, urging them to get on board:
…pardon, gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that hath dar’d
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object. Can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? Or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?
O, pardon! since a crooked figure may
Attest in little place a million;
And let us, ciphers to this great accompt,
On your imaginary forces work.
Suppose within the girdle of these walls
Are now confin’d two mighty monarchies,
Whose high upreared and abutting fronts
The perilous narrow ocean parts asunder.
Piece out our imperfections with your thoughts:
Into a thousand parts divide one man,
And make imaginary puissance;
Think, when we talk of horses, that you see them
Printing their proud hoofs i’ th’ receiving earth;
For ’tis your thoughts that now must deck our kings,
Carry them here and there, jumping o’er times,
Turning th’ accomplishment of many years
Into an hour-glass; for the which supply,
Admit me Chorus to this history;
Who prologue-like, your humble patience pray
Gently to hear, kindly to judge, our play.
In both the 1944 and 1989 film versions of the play this preamble works brilliantly, highlighting the artificiality of the filmmaking process while also gaining a note of ironic self deprecation.
Because, of course, film can have a broader canvas than theatre, and better special effects, and hosts of extras in period costume.
But watching the Insane Root company shrouded in smoke, swinging swords in balletic slow motion, mimicking the hunched posture of mounted soldiers, I can’t say that I missed any of that.
I played along.
I accepted that (hiking boots and sunglasses aside) we were in 15th century France on a field strewn, horrifyingly, with butchered corpses – even if those corpses were nothing more than scattered red tennis balls.
A third strand in my accidental study of suspension of disbelief this week emerged from reading German Expressionist Cinema by Ian Roberts, published in 2009. It’s a slim volume designed as primer on the subject and includes observations like this:
The Austrian novelist and playwright Hugo von Hofmannsthal [claimed] that “all the working people are looking for in the movie theater is a substitute for dreams”… Yet with hindsight we can acknowledge that this oneiric quality, the ability of film to transport the viewer to a world of dreams, is precisely why cinema went on to confound its critics, and why the films of the Weimar period contribute to our understanding of the process whereby cinema was transformed from a vaudeville sideshow for the masses to a global entertainment industry and a major art form in its own right.
The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, directed by Robert Wiene in 1920, is perhaps the most famous example of expressionism on film. Its obviously, unashamedly painted sets aren’t intended to feel real. They use contrasting paint to create light and shadow, and forced perspective to imply depth. They are intended to read as beyond real, as dreamscapes, or as projections from a troubled mind.
The lack of realism isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. It’s style. It supports the themes and mood of the film. And it’s one of the main reasons people are still talking about Caligari more than a hundred years after it was made.
If audiences are willing to suspend their disbelief and play along, filmmakers should feel more confident in doing things the cheap and dirty way.
Not everything needs to look cinematic or hyperreal, especially if that aspiration becomes a barrier to making anything at all.
Being aggressively handmade and imperfect might also a way to push back against the rise of computer generated imagery (CGI) and images generated with artificial intelligence.
Precast Reinforced Concrete Heart 