TANGLES © TANGLES / Monarch Media / Point Grey / Lylas / Giant Ant
In the Tangles factory: how Leah Nelson draws dissipating memory
With Tangles, Canadian director Leah Nelson delivers an accomplished first animated feature film. Adapted from Sarah Leavitt’s graphic novel, the film follows the day-to-day life of Sarah, a young woman forced to go home to care for her mother who has Alzheimer’s. The black and white animated film comes with a hyperrealist sound and is suffused with humor that pierces the sadness… Leah Nelson takes us behind the scenes of this work about memory and illness and tells us about the intricacies of her film.
There are films that slowly creep up on you and then move you to your core. Tangles is exactly that kind of movie. For Leah Nelson, it all began when she read the graphic novel. The director was going through family stuff involving dementia as well. “One of my loved ones was suffering from dementia and we had a history of the disease in the family. When I read the book, it really touched me. And I immediately imagined it as an animated film.” Very quickly, she became aware that using animation would allow for a more fragile narrative than straight-up realism. “I wanted to transcribe what I felt when reading the book and make sure that the viewers wouldn’t feel so alone.”
Leah Nelson explains that she wanted to stay true to the original graphic novel’s esthetic, while adding color to some very specific emotional outbursts. The result is stunning. It imbues the dazzling orange from the Day of the Dead and the pink lights from the flashlight or some of the luminous specters with such emotional power in this quasi monochrome universe.
The way in which Tangles is even more exceptional, is in its representation of Alzheimer’s since it does not seek to “explain” the disease. Leah Nelson pointedly refuses to go inside the ill mother’s mind. All of the staging is rooted in Sarah’s gaze and this choice gives the film its emotional force. The film does not only portray a sick person, it shows how Alzheimer’s can affect an entire familial ecosystem. Sound is particularly important for this immersion. Despite its painful subject matter, Tangles also leaves room for humor. For Leah Nelson this levity is crucial:
“ When you go through something so cruel, you must be able to laugh once in a while. Many families also live through these absurd moments filled with unexpected humor. ”
Another beautiful aspect of the movie is its love story between two women, which is told with great simplicity, without ever becoming “an issue.” For Leah Nelson, this relationship was simply part of the character’s life. “When you go through this experience at 20, illness is not the only thing going on. There’s also love, relationships, life choices.”
Entirely drawn by hand, Tangles needed more than three years of production and more than ten years of overall development. As co-founder of the animation studio Giant Ant, Leah Nelson joined with a publicity background and experience in short form. Therefore, this first feature film represented a major artistic leap. “I had to learn the animators’ language. I filmed myself playing certain scenes to be able to show the movements to the teams.” Some ideas had to be simplified for technical reasons. “In 2D animation, a simple movement can become very complicated to reproduce. There’s a constant search for balance between visual ambition and feasibility.”
Moreover, the film is a story within a story, it’s an animated film about a young woman who happens to be an illustrator. For Leah Nelson, the act of drawing almost becomes an act of resistance against memory loss. “When you put these stories to paper or integrate them in a film, they live on forever. Memories fade, but drawings, cinema, or music allow us to leave a mark.”
That might be what makes Tangles so deeply moving. The film talks about dissipating memory, to then become a vessel for storing faces, sensations, and feelings before they disappear forever.
