Tag Archives: Albert Birney

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OBEX

by Adam Barney

Filmmaker Albert Birney made quite an impression with his previous film, Strawberry Mansion, injecting whimsy and surrealism into a story about a government audit. Stuffed full of creatures and characters brought to life with an appealing DIY aesthetic, the film was a love letter to creating art and felt like it had been made by a less cynical Michel Gondry. It also made me excited for whatever Birney might be doing next.

OBEX is a black and white hallucination of a film that would be a perfect find if you were flipping channels at midnight and came upon it. It’s so weird that you’d wonder the next day if you actually watched it or just dreamed it up after some iffy late-night leftovers. It’s smaller in scale than Strawberry Mansion, but that is intentional as it is focused on one man’s odyssey to leave his home.

Conor (Birney) is a loner self-imprisoned in his home with his companion, a sweet dog named Sandy. His only apparent connection to the outside world is Mary (Callie Hernandez), a nice neighbor who delivers his groceries and tries to have conversations with him from the other side of his front door. Conor spends his days playing games on his old Macintosh and watching tapes from his vast VHS collection. One day he responds to an ad in a magazine about a new game that promises the adventure of a lifetime – OBEX.

OBEX appears to be quite dull as a computer game, but that is before the real adventure begins. A demon crawls out of Conor’s computer and kidnaps Sandy the dog and retreats to his nightmare castle beyond the dark forest. Conor must now face his fears and past traumas as he will risk everything to leave the safety of his home to go on a fantasy adventure to save poor Sandy.

Birney mashes up tropes from retro video games and the 80s to create an imaginative journey that has the right amount of madness to keep things interesting and rolling along. Conor must face off against evil skeletons and insect men with a sword that looks like it came from Spirit Halloween. He also makes friends with Victor, a guy who has an old television for a head, and a fairy (Hernandez, pulling double duty) who runs a shop that sells anything an adventurer might need. The cast is game and helps fill out the fantasy world Birney is building.

OBEX is a fun little journey about a man conquering his fears and rejoining the world. Not as crazy or stressful as Beau Is Afraid, OBEX wears its heart on its sleeve as a nostalgic adventure that feels like comfort cinema.

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Strawberry Mansion

by Hope Madden

Smart, whimsical and decidedly analog, Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney’s Strawberry Mansion turns dystopian dreamscape into retro children’s television.

Audley and Birney co-write, co-direct and co-star in this pop-surrealist romance. Audley plays James Preble, mild-mannered government employee. Preble is an auditor for the agency that taxes dreams.

Let’s say there’s a buffalo in your dream. A dream buffalo apparently runs about 5k, which costs around a nickel in taxes. Likewise, a hot air balloon, a flower, a nice view—all of it taxable. But somehow Arabella Isadora (Penny Fuller) managed never to turn in any dream taxes, compelling Prebel to pay her a visit in her titular abode.

Once there, Prebel must work his way through thousands of VHS tapes of Bella’s dreams (rather than the digital downloads that were made legal requirements years ago) to assess back taxes.

Strawberry Mansion tells a story of government overreach, corporate greed and capitalist dystopia. But it spins this yarn of a near-future surveillance state within a weird and charming, vivid dreamscape. It’s Philip K. Dick meets H.R. Pufnstuf. Nostalgia becomes the filmmakers’ escape.

The dream sequences are unpretentious, jubilant nonsense that develop a parallel plotline. Tyler Davis’s cinematography of saturated colors celebrates the childlike tactile quality of the set design and creature design, which are both handcrafted magnificence. Dan Deacon’s evocative score meshes with the directors’ vision to blur the lines between dream and reality, life with death.

There’s a toad waiter, rat sailors, and more buckets of Cap’n Kelly’s Fried Chicken than a person could reasonably consume. Strawberry Mansion’s cynicism butts up against a wholesome romantic nature in one of many ways that the filmmakers’ form perfectly matches their purpose.

Prebel treads in others’ dreams, a voyeur in a nonsense world where nothing makes logical sense, but everything feels weirdly accurate. The same experience waits for the film’s audience.