My favorite new commercial release out now, the dialogue-free claymation Shaun the Sheep Movie, is a loving tribute to the work of Buster Keaton, trading in meticulously staged sight gags and deadpan reaction shots. The soundtrack is largely subservient to the images—writer-directors Mark Burton and Richard Starzak use noises merely to punctuate the visual humor. This strategy makes for a nice change of pace from all the dumb one-liners that routinely clog up children’s animations; more importantly, it provides a welcome reminder that movies don’t need words. The cinema, of course, was silent for more than three decades before sound was introduced to the medium. By the end of the 1920s, the movies had developed a visual sophistication comparable to what exists today, as such classics as Sunrise or The Crowd demonstrate. Shaun the Sheep Movie might not be on the level of those films, but it invokes their majesty all the same.
And yet the Australian actor remains an imposing screen presence here—he employs impressively controlled body language and a steely stare to suggest a psychopathic determination. The skeletal-looking Matt Smith (given a buzz cut and a gold-sequined jacket) is no less imposing as Bully, the thug who has it in for Bones. Both actors are more commanding in River when you don’t have to hear them swear and yell, which occurs far too often for my taste. Gosling achieves some striking effects when he cuts between these two performers, as in the movie’s centerpiece, which finds Mendelsohn performing a song at his club at the same time as Smith intimidates Bones’s friend Rat (Saoirse Ronan) in a gas station parking lot. Lit by a few neon lights in darkness, both characters seem practically regal amid the atmosphere of industrial decay. Their ghoulish appearances inspire the same sort of fascination as monsters in fairy tales—in these moments Gosling’s vision attains the primal urgency one associates with silent-expressionist cinema.
