Reflective Encounters

“Adrián Jaffé’s Blocks is a hypnotic Rube Goldberg machine of a film. The world created by Jaffé and his team is one oozing with charm, featuring richly textured CG characters seemingly composed of wood, wire, buttons and anything else you’d find in a sewing kit. The initial chain reaction starts when two figures start throwing a bead, or in this case a “ball” around; what follows is the sound of two glasses clinking, the chopping of an axe, the creaking of knees and the blowing of smoke.

The soundscape of the film is intoxicating, rendering the noise of minute action into a rhythmic, staccato symphony. At least that is until the advent of a new bulky outfit for a character causes everything to crumble. An inverse chain reaction follows, guided by Murphy's Law (“anything that can go wrong will go wrong”): the ball can’t reach the other player, the clinking of cups becomes more like a punch, and the smoking man ends up on the chopping block for the axe. Jaffé’s film ultimately seems to be governed by simplistic forces of harmony, cooperation and synchronisation. But the final scene, where a character discards his bulky armour, revealing themself to be flexible and limber, seems to suggest some virtue in the discarding of the superficial ephemera that bogs down our day-to-day.”

— Matthew Chan