Without any exaggeration, Pixar’s Inside Out might secretly be one of the most influential films of the last decade. The celebrated animation house itself revisited the same basic set-up in its Oscar-winning Soul, while its former boss, John Lasseter, appropriated it in the even more recent Apple movie Luck. And now, Netflix has jumped on the bandwagon with its latest animated offering, Orion and the Dark. Ostensibly an adaptation of the children’s book of the same name by Emma Yarlett, the movie is remarkable for one reason and one reason alone.
Orion and the Dark is written (solely) by none other than Charlie Kaufman, the great Academy Award-winning screenwriter behind existential masterpieces such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mine and Being John Malkovich. For him to write a children’s film for DreamWorks is perhaps as startling as Noah Baumbach’s divorce-induced decision to co-write Madagascar 3 for the same studio. To be sure, Orion and the Dark is very much a kid’s movie, but this isn’t to say that Kaufman’s unique sensibilities have been diluted in any meaningful way.
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If anything, the screenwriter’s longstanding neuroses have found a way to creep into this story about an adolescent boy named Orion (Jacob Tremblay), who fears practically everything under the sun, and the sun itself. Among the many things that Orion is terrified of is ‘falling off a skyscraper’, misspelling ‘Vasco da Gama’ in class, and saying ‘good morning’ to his fellow students. He draws cartoons of all his fears in a deeply personal diary, which he protects with his life. Orion is hardly the average 11-year-old. In his free time, for instance, he imagines what death would be like. And don’t even get him started on reincarnation. But the one thing that scares him the most is darkness.
“Darkness and silence isn’t nothing, it’s something,” he says intelligently. ‘Nothing’, on the other hand, is practically unimaginable, and Orion is smart enough to understand this. One night, awake as usual, he’s paid a visit by none other than the physical manifestation of darkness itself. Voiced by the always exciting Paul Walter Hauser and dressed like a cheerful Death Eater, this character is called Dark. Having identified Orion as a particularly difficult case, Dark proposes that they go on an adventure, where he’ll introduce him to other Night Entities such as Insomnia and Unexplained Noises, and maybe even his eternal nemesis, Light.
Each of these characters explains to Orion what their nighttime duties are, in the hope that pulling back the curtain on their activities in some way calms him down. Insomnia keeps people awake by injecting their minds with incessant thoughts, while Unexplained Noises’ job is to make loud banging noises. But for every impish Night Entity, there is a more noble one. Sweet Dreams and Quiet, for instance, are responsible for helping people fall asleep peacefully, but just at the right moment. Dark’s mission is to educate Orion about these magical machinations, and perhaps alleviate his fears about the nighttime.
The quest is basic enough for little children to enjoy, the voice performances are enthusiastic, and even though the animation is visibly rudimentary, Kaufman’s signature touches — he gets none other than Werner Herzog to narrate a couple of sentences, and inserts references to David Foster Wallace and Saul Bass — should keep adult audiences entertained. Along with director Sean Charmatz, he finds ways to make the movie about as challenging as it can be, considering who the target audience is. Things get particularly metaphysical in the second half, when Dark himself begins questioning his existence, and the narrative begins back and forth between Orion’s present and future.
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But it’s obvious that Kaufman is working under certain restrictions, because even mediocre Pixar movies can often be more complex — at least emotionally — than Orion and the Dark. At best, it’s an approximation — an energetic and enlightening one — but an approximation nonetheless.
Orion and the Dark
Director – Sean Charmatz
Cast – Jacob Tremblay, Paul Walter Hauser, Angela Bassett, Colin Hanks, Ike Barinholtz
Rating – 3/5
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