The work of Alberto Vázques (Birdboy: The Forgotten Children,Unicorn Wars) features a cutesy art style that embodies childlike whimsy. But such visuals are deceiving. The stories that unfold in his films are far from anything cute or kid-friendly. Instead, the director explores worlds that are dark, bloody and disturbingly realistic; with Decardo, he does so through tiny talking mice and mushrooms.
Decorado (Spanish for “set” or “stage”) is his newest feature film, and it follows the story of a middle-aged, unemployed, and paranoid mouse named Arnold who believes the world is artificial and simulated. His stress grows each day in the city of Anywhere as the mega corp ALMA (Spanish for “soul”) continues to control its people and exploit the land for economic power. As Arnold becomes increasingly uncomfortable with the world around him, he isolates himself from his neighbors, watches his relationship with his wife, Maria, erode, and witnesses his closest friends, Ramiro and Crazy Chicken, face unjust hardships.
In this harsh world, everyone is constantly suffering. People work for pennies, and most are barely getting by. Lurking around the corner of their evictions is ALMA, which gobbles up their homes, turning them into resorts for the wealthy. Residents are given prescriptions for their (systemic) issues; throwing their pills down the drain results in ALMA’s sewer sifters discovering who’s taking their happy meds and who isn’t. No one can leave the town as the surrounding forest is guarded by ALMA’s surveillance owl. In said forest is a forgotten, lost gaggle of junkies who get their fixes by doing favors for ALMA.
It’s a nightmarishly miserable world, one that feels eerily familiar to the real one. The weight of Arnold and Maria’s tired, baggy eyes is all too familiar. The constant surveillance, wealth disparity, and Anywhere’s corporation-run government feed into some very real fears.
Vázques makes these unfortunate realities a bit more digestible through subtle humor. The wit is usually dry and dark – sometimes, though, it’s slap-sticky and wacky – and most often arrives during the saddest bit of a character’s sob story or the most tense moment in a scene. It’s comforting in a strange, twisted way.
Decardo shows its audience that a good laugh can make the overwhelmingly bleak bits of the world just a bit more bearable – a much needed reminder today. Such moments also point to the absurdity of dystopia. Just when things couldn’t get worse, they somehow do, and always in ways that feel far too exaggerated or hyperbolic to be real. This is something the animation plays into too: one moment the scene is drawn beautifully, soft and warm; in the next second it’s jarring, graphic, and horrifying.
What really matters, though – both in Decardo and in the real world – is that love conquers all. At the end of the day, Maria and Arnold learn to love one another in Anywhere. Though at first it seems the grass is greener elsewhere – either away from the depressing city or by lovingly embracing ALMA – near the movie’s end they’ve grown to understand that easy ways of life yield lesser results than their limitless love.
This is at the forefront of Decardo, and it’s a warming theme. But with so much time spent on it, there’s barely any room to unpack the other, arguably more significant message about inauthentic worlds. That chunk of the plot is executed clunkily and left half-done. E.g: The audience never discovers why the residents of Anywhere act like puppets on a stage, and it never becomes clear who’s really pulling the strings.
Though ALMA looks like the villain, by the time the film’s credits roll it seems that the mega corp might just be another marionette. Somewhere, there’s a deeper-rooted problem that is never unmasked; a puppet master who never comes onto the stage. Sometimes other storylines, like Maria’s short-lived bout of depression, take up too much time to address such a complex topic. Instead of delving deeper, the end is rushed, and Arnold, Maria and their neighbors push aside their world’s issues, instead resigning to them half-heartedly.
Despite people loving a happy, moralizing ending, Decardo gives its audience the exact opposite. Arnold and Maria love each other; when they discover the real root of their problems – the root of all the world’s problems – they care not though.
It might seem like Decardo is saying that submitting to the powers that be is the only option; that love will sustain our individualistic happiness, and that’s what really matters. In a way, it’s a selfish sentiment.
In another way, though, it proves that Decardo paints a world that’s very real. Underneath the critique of capitalism and greed, it exposes the fact that no one wants to fight, to make sacrifices, for a real solution. Instead, people opt for personalized bandages; for drifting mindlessly through a terrible world, taking comfort in the little things. Nothing’s more real and familiar than that.
Decorado is now in theaters.
If you enjoyed this post, please consider supporting Third Coast Review’s arts and culture coverage by making a donation. Choose the amount that works best for you, and know it goes directly to support our writers and contributors.
