RUBEN BRANDT, COLLECTOR: Art, Heists, & Trippy Nightmares

For being his directorial debut, Milorad Krstić’s Ruben Brandt, Collector is an astounding example of how boundless the animation medium has become. Here is a film that draws influence from numerous examples of art to not only stage vivid interpretations of famous paintings but uses them for a surreal heist picture of great action and terror. It’s as much a genuine spectacle worthy of indie arthouse for its sophisticated visuals as it is an exciting and action-packed story of trippy nightmares and thrilling capers.

A World of Weird

The film exists in a world of characters that can appear to have anything from misaligned eyes to extra limbs to literally being two-dimensional. Most of them seem to move relatively smooth through this abstract reality while others seem to be stuck in the background. For a film that features a lot of famous artwork, the question arises what is art and what is real.

It’s hard to tell and even harder for the psychiatrist Ruben Brandt (Iván Kamarás), a man tortured with nightmares of paintings coming to life and murdering him. He specializes in dealing with criminals that have fears they need to conquer, using art as a means of owning what troubles them. Taking some of his own medicine, he figures his clients can give a little something back to him by helping him literally own that which plagues his mind.

In his employment are a number of quirky criminals to help with this caper, including the classy and sexy Mimi (Gabriella Hámori), who manages to make her heists look so good with dancing between car chases. Her new employment with Ruben attracts Mimi’s law-abiding rival, Mike (Zalán Makranczi), constantly chasing her across the globe. He’s prepared for Mimi’s rhythm of cleverly alluding the authorities and pilfering art museums. What he’s not prepared for is the true reason why Ruben needs to swipe this artwork, relating to a troubled past with terrifying secrets to unearth.

Ruben Brant has just about everything I’ve been thirsting for out of adult animation. Its tale is a layered one that touches on the dangers of nostalgia when left unconscious and unresolved. The animation style is wholly unique, bleeding between Ruben’s reality and fantasy with fearful surrealism, where even the inhabitants of this odd dimension question what is true and what is an art installation. There’s vibrant vigor to its pacing where heists come fast and frantic, sometimes involving helicopters and gunfire.

Maintaining that sleek caper aesthetic is a colorfully bold layout of stylish and sexy locations and characters, where basic information gathering can take place anywhere from a hot-air balloon above a green countryside to a decadent pool with a convenient computer. There’s also a daring thriller aspect where discoveries in dark rooms usually lead to violent confrontations with bloody ends.

A Style All Its Own

There’s an elegance to the film all its own where one could pull out a number of influences both animated and live-action, but you’ll have to resort to shoving a hefty helping of them in a blender before coming close. The giddiness of Ruben’s scheme would seem akin to a throwback caper comedy with its high energy, but Ruben’s psychological drive is still treated with serious darkness. The mixture of abstract designs, where characters literally appear as disembodied hands and mouths, could be viewed with a certain refinement of an indie art film, but that branding doesn’t seem as proper for a film with car chases, dance sequences, museum skirmishes, and a mounting ransom from angry characters seeking justice.

Perhaps a closer comparison would be Peter Chung’s Aeon Flux animated series, the way the film fully embraces its weird atmosphere with earnest seriousness, made most evident with the low-key and deep English voice cast. The story touches on many psychological themes that effortlessly weave in a sensation of brisk comedy and sleek sexuality, as well as a stark ugliness amid beauty with elongated faces and detailed mosquitos that suck blood in vivid close-ups.

That bold nature of Chung is something I’d been missing from most animated films that feel a need to fully explain their transmundane world. Brandt merely plops us in and lets us try to keep up as quickly as Mimi can ditch the cops, presenting a thrill in the chase to pin down this peculiar production.

Conclusion: Ruben Brandt, Collector

Thanks to a lucidly strong story with wildly free animation, Ruben Brandt, Collector is one of the most intoxicating and intelligent of animated films. As with Ruben’s condition, it has a certain appeal that haunts the mind long after, lingering for all its oddity and vibrancy. A close resemblance to such a tone is with Sylvain Chomet’s The Triplets of Bellville, which created a dreamlike world of absurdity, ugliness, and unease.

A key difference is that in Ruben Brandt’s world, there’s a certain grounding in reality that always keeps the plot focused amid its trippy visuals and cruel nightmares, creating a more eerie uncertainty that’s a pleasure to be lost within. The film is such a sophisticated delight for animation lovers and thrill-seekers that I can only hope its stellar direction will remain as a stronger example in the case of animation being more than just kid-oriented entertainment.

What did you think of Ruben Brandt, Collector? How well do you think it ranks next to other adult-oriented animated films? Let us know in the comments!

Ruben Brandt, Collector was released on February 15, 2019 in the U.S. For all international release dates, click here.