The Wizard of Speed and Time

Movie. 1988. Mike Jittlov

An auteur animator tries to make a short film.

To be absolutely clear, this movie is mostly magical. Animator, director, and main character Mike Jittlov paints himself as a lovable magician, surrounded by animated wonder.

On the other hand, this is a movie about a filmmaker which positions that filmaker as a genius, set upon on all sides by mediocrity and smallness, and that filmaker’s overcoming to grant his unique, personal vision to the world. The world of the movie is a giant conspiracy to keep Mike Jittlov’s perfect vision from becoming a reality. That part of the movie that isn’t magic (and the movie is mostly magic) is a thing of pure ego, and that ego is injured and aggrieved by the fact that people don’t acknowledge it as the center of the creative universe.

We live in a world where technological magic and aggrieved ego are already pretty thick on the ground.

Jittlov’s 1979 short film with the same title (and the real subject of the fictionalized feature) is here: