Ashes to Ashes review: an experimental, hokily acted 360 video
Here’s something you don’t see everyday: a single take 360 video presented from the perspective of an urn containing the ashes of a recently deceased man. The 11 minute Ashes to Ashes is nothing if not ambitious: a “surreal tragicomedy” (in the words of its creators) that tosses around various concepts from film and theatre to see if they stick in VR. It even has three lead creatives representing different mediums: a “theatre director” (Ingejan Ligthart Schenk), “film director” (Jamille van Wijngaarden) and “VR director” (Steye Hallema).
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the results are rather mixed, with flecks of innovation here and there but nothing that truly excels or engrosses. By attempting to evoke the qualities of three mediums they’ve fallen short of all of them; the old “jack of all trades” expression comes to mind. Ashes to Ashes was however conferred in a spirit of experimentation that makes one more forgiving of its shortcomings.
Directors: Ingejan Ligthart Schenk, Jamille van Wijngaarden and Steye Hallema
Year of release: 2016
Format: 360 video
Experienced on: Oculus Go
In the introductory scene, five actors—playing family members of the deceased—stand in curved formation around the camera, staring right into it. In the narrative world they’re looking at the urn containing their father’s (and grandfather’s) ashes; from our POV, of course, they’re looking directly at us. Throughout the history of film, the technique of direct address has been criticized for having a destructive effect, pricking the cinematic illusion by breaking the fourth wall. It has the opposite effect in virtual reality, where there is no fourth wall, intensifying our relationship with the content.
One of the deceased man’s sons reads out his father’s rather unusual final wish: “I want you to make a bomb out of my urn and launch me into the sky.” This precedes an argument between three brothers about what they should do with the urn. One says “I’m scattering his ashes at sea.” Another says “dad’s coming with me.” And a third—storming into the room, bottle of spirits in hand, clearly a boozer—insists he’s “taking dad with me” on “my flashy French all-timer.” This discussion dramatically comes to a head when a young girl, Fie (Bo Boekelman), screams then fires a flare gun into a lamp shade, causing it to burst into flames.
This scene isn’t well acted; in fact the performances are hokey and histrionic throughout. But it does end in an interesting and unusual way. A man dressed entirely in black, who appears to be the equivalent of a stagehand, enters the room with an extinguisher and puts out the fire. His implausible presence is the first in a series of contrivances that, cribbed from theatre, knowingly break plausibility by drawing attention to the creation and manufacturing of the experience. The most notable is the rearrangement of the set in real-time; we see other stagehands move the walls around us, and notice the conspicuous sight of tracks upon which the camera is moved through different spaces.
In each space, a short scene takes place. One plays out between two lovers, next to a gold-coloured car, in front of a backdrop painted with fake looking night time stars. They embrace, canoodle, and fall off the bonnet. In the next scene Fie returns and dances to a lewd song (“shake your ass, come on and shake your booty…”). Using an editing room trick, she’s positioned in multiple parts of the tableau, appearing in front of us as well as to the sides and behind.
What’s the meaning of this madness? Ashes to Ashes is a bit of a noodle-scratcher. It’s also a bit amateur; a bit rinky-dink. The decision to capture the action in a single take and rearrange the sets before us creates an intriguingly odd and stagey effect, though not something I’m keen to see again in VR. Even during moments of motion and movement there’s an unavoidable feeling that we’re locked into a rigidly pre-determined and unalterable route, literally and narratively. We’re acutely aware that nothing we do in this world matters; we have no agency or input. We are, indeed, as impactful as a pile of cremated ashes.