Claydream

Director: Marq Evans
Producers: Tamir Ardon
Year: 2021
Country: USA
BBFC Certification: 12
Duration: 96 mins

The fact that a documentary like Claydream exists at all is a cause for celebration. As a longtime animation enthusiast, it sometimes frustrates me just how many geniuses of the medium have been overlooked in favour of repeatedly eulogising the same small group of admittedly deserving mainstays. Will Vinton is certainly among these overlooked geniuses and the painstaking detail and beauty of his work seems completely incongruous with his relative obscurity. Vinton’s medium was Claymation, a term trademarked by Vinton himself which has become a standard descriptor for all clay animation. Most people probably know him for The California Raisins, a true 80s phenomenon which is less remembered with each elapsing year, or perhaps Michael Jackson’s Speed Demon video, but there are greater treasures in Vinton’s filmography. He was nominated for five Oscars, winning one for his debut Closed Mondays, co-directed with Bob Gardiner. His Claymation Christmas Celebration is a festive staple in my house, while his 1985 feature film The Adventures of Mark Twain is so spellbinding that it inspired me to read the complete novels of Twain in order to better understand it.

While it’s easy for an animation obsessive such as myself to wonder at people’s inability to appreciate Vinton’s work, if I take a step back for a second it is even easier to see why he remains a cult figure. Vinton’s work is idiosyncratic and obscure, lacking the easy commercial appeal of a Disney or Aardman. The Adventures of Mark Twain, for instance, is designed to give an impressionistic sense of Twain and his work through references to his stories that refuse to overexplain themselves. The result is a mesmerising film that takes a good deal of work on the audience’s part and benefits greatly from a pre-existing knowledge of Twain, something it seems to assume in its unclear target audience. One of Claydream’s most admirable qualities is its appreciation of this niche appeal and what it says about Vinton himself. Though I would’ve doubtless eaten up a documentary that went through all Vinton’s films chronologically while talking heads enthused about their genius, Claydream presents a much more satisfying overview of his career while also digging deeper into the nature of his emotional complexities, as well as the numerous unpleasant legal and personal battles in which he found himself embroiled.

Fans of Vinton’s films will not be disappointed by the visuals of Claydream. Not a minute goes by in which the screen isn’t filled with his glorious Claymation creations, which are a source of real joy. But at its heart, Claydream is a tragic and philosophical film about the incompatibility of art and commerce and the doomed battle fought by dreamers to realise their vision. I really appreciated the film’s depiction of the difficulty of continued success, even (or especially) in the aftermath of a megahit. The joy of the creative process requires some business acumen if it’s to become a livelihood rather than just a hobby, and so many of the great artists struggle with this side, especially when it brings them up against the cutthroats who look at things of beauty and see only their dollar value. So Claydream, like The Social Network, is framed by tense legal proceedings around a table, in this case actual documentary footage of a million dollar lawsuit Vinton took out against Nike chairman Phil Knight. A financial backer of Will Vinton Productions, Knight’s eventual takeover and ousting of Vinton from his own studio gives Claydream a grim throughline which underscores the celebration of the same studio’s creative output, although it was a revelation to me that this sad episode ultimately resulted in the formation of Laika, one of the finest animation studios of current times.

There are other dark strands to Claydream, including the vendetta against Vinton waged by his former partner Bob Gardiner, which seems to be founded on jealousy and ultimately mental illness. Vinton’s own emotional elusiveness also becomes a theme, with his work seen as his major outlet for self-expression. The fact that Vinton’s distinctive features are so easily turned into Claymation themselves drives home this point nicely. But it’s important to remember how swiftly vast positive periods of time can be brushed over in career-spanning documentaries. A Golden Age of about ten years at the beginning of Will Vinton Productions is alluded to early on, illustrated with excerpts from remarkable films like Rip Van Winkle and The Little Prince. The devastating failure of Vinton’s magnum opus The Adventures of Mark Twain is tempered by clips which clearly display what an exhilarating artistic success it is. And Vinton’s ability to be philosophical about his setbacks can either be seen as a wounded man internalising his hurt or a genuinely heartening example of someone moving on from their mistakes and channeling their failures into new enterprises.

Having come to Claydream expecting a film of unadulterated joy, I was surprised to be met with what at first seemed to be a thing of intense melancholy. But the deeper I got into the film, the more I came to appreciate director Marq Evans’ emotionally astute approach, which lets the work speak for itself and refuses to indulge in one-sided finger-pointing over the business side of the story. While some critics have criticised Claydream for not being the outright celebration of Vinton’s oeuvre they were expecting, the reality is far more fulfilling and offers something more than mere memories of the thrill of watching the films. For that, we can still go directly to the films themselves. Claydream gives us a rewarding look inside an industry which, on the surface, can seem like a beautiful dream but which, on closer inspection, has feet of… well, you can fill in the rest.

Claydream is released on Altitude.Film and other digital platforms from 21 November 2022.