NEPTUNE FROST: Terabyte Revolution in C-Major

Neptune Frost radiates with vigorously sensible energy and insight. From the jump, it’s evident that this movie is the product of people whose artistic temperament is matched by their sociopolitical passions. If a film has even the faintest spirit of protest, it’ll only work if we know we can get behind the voice of its creators; within the first few minutes of this artfully spirited, neon-brushed, Afrofuturist musical, you feel the sincerity emitting from the energetic direction from Anisia Uzeyman and Saul Williams (who also penned the script). It’s perfectly audible from the first bar then sustains throughout the rest of the picture.

The far-out synopsis — a renegade faction breaks from its e-waste dump to overthrow an authoritarian regime with the help of an escaped coltan miner and an intersex runaway — is enough to whet the appetite of any curious viewer. And the very notion of an Afrofuturist musical with heavily inspired political overtones sweetens the deal. Furnish it with foamy, analog visuals, a barrage of colorful props, costumes, and eclectic decor, all of which is executed with a self-consciously appealing sense of artifice amid the techno-layered bric-a-brac.

It’s bolstered by this homemade, DIY veneer that eschews the familiarity but skirts the uncanny. We can see that the futurist tech is modified bicycle parts, spray-painted television screens, and plumbing supplies, but the film, a coproduction of Rwanda, the US, France, and Canada, calibrates you to its funky exuberance, so it all jives.

High-Minded + High Concept = Highly Successful

It’s the stuff of high-flying spectacle, but it’s pulled off with the playful glee that typifies the best of Jean-Luc Godard’s late-sixties era. Neptune Frost is high-concept and low-budget, but unlike the enfants terribles of French cinema, Uzeyman and Williams more than respect their genre because there’s fist-pumping enthusiasm for every avenue of interest throughout the brisk runtime of 105 minutes.

For all of the hyphenated descriptions, the film is remarkably undemanding. It swiftly captures your attention, seduces your senses, and wins your ears with its rhythmic fulmination. The film’s confidence pushes it through its freeform but emotionally charged story; the music has elemental ritualism, a collective feeling of earthy precedence through which we can imagine the power and substance of communal activism and protest.

The story is broad and serves the film’s nonconforming sensibilities perfectly. Embodying the renegade spirit, the film hits the ground running with a properly distressing inciting incident when a slave-driver henchman beats one of the “workers” to death at a coltan mine. The outcry of injustice is heard; we gather this isn’t the first time someone’s died at the hands of tyrannical overseers. Before being dispatched, the worker holds the piece of earth overhead in this unspoken reverence, reflecting a profound connection with the earth, which is emphasized by the act of violence immediately following.

Tekno, the fallen worker, is cradled by his brother (Bertrand Ninteretse), and when he cries out for his life, we know that he’s not solely referring to his blood relative, but this scene evokes that feeling that we’re all brothers and sisters regardless of kin — if one suffers at the hands of oppression, we all have someone or something to lose. The plainspoken relevance of this act and how it relates to the history of oppression as a whole reverberates with allegorical heft. It sets the thematic frequency to the right channel.

The Rhythm Of The Right

Neptune Frost gains momentum from the start and keeps ramping up with visuals and steadfast pacing. Earthy musical notation evolves from robust log drums to frothy waves of synth-charged dance anthems. There are traces of traditional musical mechanics, paired with uprising and revolt narratives, then seasoned with the fugitive, lovers-on-the-run. It’s a concert of varied subgenres, and the entirety of this film is original, fresh, and wholly engrossing each and every colorful step and beat.

The narrative ascension is correlated with its musical growth, starting with basic drumming on logs, then moving into semi-acapella numbers; the technology ramps up the beats to get more complex and polyrhythmic paeans hailing terabyte revolutions and damning the tyrant overlords who threaten the welfare of the known world. It’s a political incantation, but the entirety of the film is a plea for change, acceptance, and tolerance, both social and political. There’s a clear anti-colonialist bent alongside an unmistakable celebration of gender fluidity in that the film’s champion character is an intersex renegade, played by both Elvis Ngabo and Cheryl Isheja.

Neptune Frost exists in multiple arenas of filmic interest: as an activist film, a revisionist musical, and an Afrofuturist pseudo-dystopia. It’s also reminiscent of neorealist traditions; however, the film intuitively counters this while simultaneously embracing the scrappy veracity of neorealist filmmaking. Williams and Uzeyman reach beyond the urgency of location photography and non-traditional performers and go for broke to realize an alternate, futuristic surreality, recognizable but uncanny in its sincerely rendered enthusiasm. Instead of recording the dire urgency of the present, here they use it as a springboard to illustrate the significance of looking forward.

Wrapping Up

Neptune Frost knows exactly what kind of movie it wants to be, follows its own path, makes its own music, and hits every note along the way. And in some ways, it’s inspirational to see artists taking risks and reaching for more conceptually daring material regardless of the odds or constraints. I think Neptune Frost is precisely what its makers envisioned (or something close), and we’re all the better for it. This is a movie people will be talking about for a while.

Given the rise in genre crossovers, do you think we’ll see more independent features that embrace multiple high-concept genres previously thought to be beyond the scope of what they’re making? Comment below and let us know.

Neptune Frost is now playing in select theaters.