Fragile Machine (2005)

Rating: **
Review Date: 1/4/06

Not at all what I was expecting, this is a thirty minute computer animated tale of Mankind's first cyborg told in music video format. It follows the life, death, rebirth, and salvation of a woman named Leda Nea who sells her body to science to become a cybernetic being. Unfortunately, the whole thing fails to be interesting on any level, and the symbolism is far too obtuse for someone like me to understand and appreciate. It's clearly a vanity project, and as such it suffers from pretentious self importance, which leaves a slightly bad taste. It's also unfortunate that it tries to promote itself as a Japanese film when in fact, it isn't. The animation and cinematography are fair, but not overly attractive or compelling. The biggest problem with doing a computer animated film is that the technology evolves so rapidly that anything that comes out is immediately outdated. "Fragile Machine" might have been cutting edge back in the mid 1990's, but by today's standards it looks stiff and crude. Still, I give the creators much credit for being able to pull it off, even if the results aren't to my liking. At least they're doing something, whereas my copy of Lightwave is collecting dust in a distant corner...