[SXSW 2021 World Premiere Review] The Spine of Night Deconstructs The Myth of the Hero's Journey

Animated fantasy films were huge in the 70s and early 80s as they managed to create stunning vistas and fantastical worlds that would have been impossible or too costly to make as live action films. This process was helped along with an art technique called rotoscoping, where the animator traces over motion picture footage, frame by frame, to produce animated action that feels real. 

Filmmaker Ralph Bakshi popularized this technique in the fantasy world as he created boundary-pushing films such as Wizards and The Lord of the Rings and the technique remains a staple today in films like Guardians of the Galaxy’s Rocket Raccoon, Sin City and, in a full circle moment, characters in Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The Spine of Night is a modern attempt to recreate the feel of those original rotoscoped fantasies, from Wizards to Fire & Ice and Heavy Metal. 

It mostly works as an experiment in exploring world building and, most interestingly, deconstructing the concept of the hero’s journey. 

The Spine of Night begins with a naked woman named Tzod (Lucy Lawless), clad only in ceremonial bones, climbs a frozen mountain, the wind and snow whipping against her bare skin with force. Once she ascdends the dangerous terrain she discovers a giant skull embedded in the side of the mountain, blue light emanating from its open maw. Inside, she discovers the light comes from a growth of blue flowers that’s protected by The Guardian (Richard E. Grant). His goal is to keep the bloom away from the prying and greedy eyes of humans. He believes that knowledge is power and it must be coveted away from humankind. But Tzod has a different story to tell. One that paints The Guardian’s reticence as a negative force in the world. 

Her story begins as a pagan ritual. Once, a fragment of the bloom danced down the mountain and ended up nestled in her native land of the Swamp of Bastal. She was once a shaman who wore a garment of the bloom and used its petals to make fire turn blue and dance with visions. But her swamp stood in the way of “progress,” and an army from the city of Pyr descended upon her homeland, killing its natives and taking Tzod prisoner. Meanwhile, a scholar named Gahl-Sur (Jordan Douglas Smith) covets the power her wreath of bloom holds. 

Told in vignettes that span throughout eons of “progress” in this mythical world, The Spine of Night then charts Gahl-Sur’s endless rise of power and the destruction that comes with coveting knowledge. We see Gahl-Sur’s betrayal and the way the bloom represents Knowledge and the way humanity continues to hoard it, instead of helping each other. In one particular segment, books are brought to the Ashur, the keepers of knowledge, wagonload by wagonload; taken from ruins and cities and to preserved by the keepers. But they, too, hoard the knowledge, proclaiming, “The wisdom of the library is for the greatest minds in the land!” while the peasants around the keep starve and die. 

Colonialism and oppression are the themes of the day and each vignette of The Spine of Night explores those concepts through the lens of a fantasy narrative. It builds a vast world filled with impertinent gods, uncaring of the world they’ve created through dreams. And the imperfect humankind, made in their unflattering image, who are careless and cruel to their own kind. It’s a sick wheel of “progress” that turns and crushes civilizations, time and time again, throughout the history of this mythical world. At the center of it, this mythical bloom protected by The Guardian who is just one of many seeking power and replacing the protector; a vicious circle repeated in the same vein as the cruelty happening away from the snowy mountaintop. 

The Spine of Night ignores traditional storytelling and, in this way, it’s easy to see resemblance to Heavy Metal in the way it embraces an anthological storytelling perspective. At the center of the narrative sits Gahl-Sur, the man whose lust for knowledge and power continues to destroy the world. But in an interesting twist, the narrative continually resists the traditional hero’s journey narrative so ingrained in fantasy stories. The people who stand in the way of Gahl-Sur are mostly nameless and represent the outsiders of society; in the final climactic story Tzod tells, it’s an unknown human who eventually stands up to Gahl-Sur’s atrocities. 

The Spine of Night smartly inverts that narrative and, instead, puts the emphasis on the disenfranchised population who have been crushed for centuries under Gahl-Sur and people like him. That said, the film won’t be for everyone. It’s very, very slow and methodically paced. And it relies on the audience’s understanding and knowledge of, as well as appreciation for, fantasy films and novels. It’s a dense piece of fiction that probably won’t be palatable to a casual audience, even with its explosive battles and punctuations of immense, over-the-top gore. Fans of world-building and getting lost in pondering fantasy novels will find lots to love here and it’s obvious that writers/directors Philip Gelatt and Morgan Galen King understand the fantasy genre to its core. 

Ultimately, The Spine of Night is a beautiful piece of rotoscoped animation that deconstructs the hero’s journey as it explores the consequences of coveting knowledge and power.