Fan­tas­tic Machine review – there’s way too much going on here

In 1902, England’s King Edward VII was crowned. Two months ear­li­er, Georges Méliès made a film about it in his French stu­dio to be released at the coro­na­tion date. Report­ed­ly, the king said, ​“What a fan­tas­tic machine!” and his excla­ma­tion gave direc­tors Axel Daniel­son and Max­im­i­lien Van Aertryck an idea: a decade-long research process of exam­in­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties of the cin­e­mat­ic appa­ra­tus and the respon­si­bil­i­ties that come with its evolution.

Fan­tas­tic Machine uses the form of a video essay to track his­tor­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal high­lights in the evo­lu­tion of the cam­era, a man-made machine that promis­es to record and show real­i­ty as it is. An over­ar­ch­ing theme that binds all the fea­tured clips togeth­er – from Muy­bridge to Tik­Toks – presents the cam­era as a medi­a­tor between humans and the world. The task falls on edi­tor Mikel Cee Karls­son to string togeth­er scat­tered chronolo­gies, mate­ri­als of dif­fer­ent qual­i­ty and for­mat, and the (bare­ly artic­u­lat­ed) polit­i­cal impli­ca­tions of it all.

Much of this is achieved in spite of a sparse, but declam­a­to­ry voiceover, which in most cas­es resem­bles no more than image cap­tions read aloud. In a way, the mark of a good video essay is hav­ing the edit­ed footage speak for itself, and while that is the case here, the way Fan­tas­tic Machine is nar­rat­ed leaves too much unexplored.

The back­bone of the film can be pinned down to inven­tions and their evo­lu­tion – of pho­tog­ra­phy, mov­ing image pro­jec­tions, desk­tops, green screens, tele­vi­sion, self­ie cam­eras – but the more impor­tant con­cep­tu­al detours need­ed to make sense of these devel­op­ments take a short­cut. At times, Daniel­son and Van Aertryck make good use of mate­ri­als that are par­tic­u­lar­ly intrigu­ing in rela­tion to cinema’s pro­pa­gan­dis­tic qual­i­ties by sug­gest­ing there is con­ti­nu­ity where one would see ide­o­log­i­cal difference.

An out­take of an ISIS-pro­pa­gan­da film or an inter­view of Leni Riefen­stahl com­par­ing the film­mak­ing log­ic to that of bal­let pairs with allies’ footage of con­cen­tra­tion camps to chill­ing effect. While these bits sig­nal a regained trust in the cam­era as a wit­ness, what is not addressed is the rep­re­sen­ta­tion­al taboo haunt­ing Holo­caust imagery to this day.

Sim­i­lar­ly, the film indi­cates there is more to fram­ing and off-screen space than we are led to believe, but it nev­er men­tions the real nature of cin­e­ma: move­ment, as in, edit­ing. A pow­er­play between con­ceal and reveal is not to be found sole­ly in the cam­era, but in the way mov­ing images are put togeth­er. As banal as this may seem, the omis­sion of this tru­ism (mon­tage was orig­i­nal­ly done in-cam­era) takes away from the film’s self-reflex­ive poten­tial. That said, Fan­tas­tic Machine makes for a decent A‑level crash-course in media his­to­ry, before you grad­u­ate to Kirsten Johnson’s far supe­ri­or Cam­er­ap­er­son.