Are there dystopias that are at the same time ‘feel good’ films? The couple of screenwriters and directors Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney strive to prove that the answer is ‘yes!’ with ‘Strawberry Mansion‘, their film made in 2021. It is a pessimistic anticipation of a near and predictable future, packaged as a fantasy film, which despite the visibly low budget manages to absorb us into a different world.
1984 is 2035 in ‘Strawberry Mansion‘. The government decided to tax dreams. This requires special technology and officials to implement the legislation. Preble, the main hero of the film, is such a government clark, a tax official. He reads the citizens’ dreams and determines what taxes they have to pay. Preble is sent to audit the home of an eccentric old woman named Bella, who has not declared her dreams in a long time. Awaiting him are thousands of VHS magnetic tapes on which she, using outdated technology, had recorded her dreams. He gets down to business and soon learns that Bella has discovered a secret. Citizens’ taxed dreams are not theirs alone. They are infested with the advertisements that big corporations use to promote their products. The mind control through constant surveillance in Orwell’s novel had been replaced by control through advertising. Bella and her late husband had invented a device, a helmet with colored light bulbs, that protected their dreams. Before long Preble will find himself absorbed in a world where reality, good dreams, nightmares, Bella from 2035 and Bella from her youth, spiders and rat sailors will mix in a colorful and illogical universe, but more important than anything – one free from control.
‘Strawberry Mansion‘ is full of cinematic and literary references, from cinema for kids and surrealist avant-garde films of the first half of the 20th century, through Orwell and American science fiction, to more recent fantasy productions. Everything is done with ‘low-cost’ means that are as explicitly exposed as some of the progressive ideas that the story tries to convey to us. Kentucker Audley also plays the title role, surrounded by a cast where about half the time the actors are masked or disguised. One can criticize the script saying that the story is not very coherent, but are our dreams often coherent? Dreamlike and extreme, rhetorical and imaginative, this film manages to tell a story about the dangers of manipulation and psychological control in the form of a fable that has only the appearance of a children’s film. Viewers may feel good at the end of watching, but those who will think back about the meanings of what they saw will not be able to avoid the warnings. ‘Strawberry Mansion‘ does not avoid clumsiness and naiveties, some intentional, but Kentucker Audley and Albert Birney prove that they are two filmmakers who have something to say and are worth watching, together or separately.