Last Days of Coney Island (Short)
Ralph Bakshi is one of the most distinctive, original minds in animation, and a big part of the reason why is that he has never seen animation solely as an art form to cater to children and families. His films are very much made for adults, whether you’re talking about the X-rated “Fritz the Cat” or fantasy films like “Wizards” and “Fire and Ice” or something truly experimental like his recent short film release, “Last Days of Coney Island.” None of these films are the work of a director who wants to dumb things down for the broadest audience possible; they’re the work of an artist who would rather make films his way than do anything for easy money. Of course, that is what results in a project as personal to Bakshi as “Last Days of Coney Island” languishing in development Hell for the past decade before Bakshi, realizing how technology meant he could do his work cheaper and easier, took to Kickstarter, and got the film funded independently.
It’s hard to imagine ever writing a review of one of Bakshi’s films again without acknowledging the panel of his I went to at Dragon*Con in 2011. At the time, I had only seen “Fritz the Cat” and his adaptation of the first part of “Lord of the Rings,” but I knew his name, and definitely was curious as to what he had to say. It’s still one of my favorite panels I’ve ever been to at Dragon*Con, and it was where I first heard about “Last Days of Coney Island.” Bakshi is older now, but his gravelly voice has been with him for many years, although listening to him discuss the project that Sunday morning in Atlanta, the personal nature of the project for the Brooklyn filmmaker came through loud and clear whether you were a fan of his bold, controversial work from way back, or a relative novice like myself who was curious to see more.
So, what is “Last Days of Coney Island,” as a narrative, and as a viewing experience? To answer the latter first, it’s about as hallucinatory as any animated film I’ve ever seen. The blending of animation and live-action footage (all of it seeming like old stock footage) is fittingly surreal for the narrative, which involves criminals, cops and prostitutes who have taken up residence at the run-down Coney Island amusement district in New York during the 1960s. The live-action film is not always presented as pristine and focused, and the animation feels rougher and less polished than what we saw in the days of “Wizards” and “American Pop”; it sometimes looks like he just used rough sketches for the final product. That may seem to contradict when Bakshi says that the animation is “probably higher quality than anything I ever made,” but it’s not as contradictory as you might think when you look at the six-figure budget (a pittance for a major filmmaker nowadays), and the fact that for the stories he is telling, less polish is considerably more effective than if it looked like a Disney or Miyazaki film, quality-wise. This is a seedy, dive-bar storyline (aided beautifully by a jazzy score from Mark Taylor) about people with little to live for, and nothing to lose. When it happens, the violence is messy, the humor is jet black, and the sex (yes, there is nudity) is unseemly to witness. But it’s as close to a type of reality as just about any filmmaker, let alone an animator, has ever gotten with this type of story. Whether you appreciate Bakshi’s approach or not, the bigger takeaway from “Last Days of Coney Island” is that the great filmmaker still has plenty of imagination and vision left, and more unique stories to tell. Hopefully, it won’t always take Kickstarter for them to come to life.
