‘Witch’ is terrifying

By JACOB RICH

Senior Arts Editor

A24 is quietly killing it. Do peo-

ple realize how many of the great-
est films of the 
2010’s this New 
York-based 
distribution 
company 
has 

financed? None 
of their films 
make an enor-
mous 
amount 

of money — the 
few that have done huge numbers 
include “Ex Machina,” my favor-
ite film of 2015, and the critically 
acclaimed Amy Winehouse doc 
“Amy” — but almost all of them are 
innovative and excellent. You have 
them to thank for “The Spectacu-
lar Now,” “Obvious Child,” “Under 
the Skin,” “The End of the Tour” 
and “Room.”

And now we have “The Witch,” 

a tiny-budget period horror film 
with a brand-new writer/director 
attached (Robert Eggers). Stuck 
somewhere between “The Shin-
ing” and “Evil Dead,” this is a bru-
tal, tension-filled exploration of 
Christian guilt so uncomfortable 
and disturbing that it made two 
couples sitting in front of me get up 
and exit the theater 10 minutes in. I 
didn’t blame them for leaving. This 
is a tremendous film that continues 
A24’s streak of high quality releas-
es, but it’s not for everyone.

“The Witch” is as much about 

a time and a place as it is about a 
situation. The film takes us back to 
primitive America, where surviv-
ing each winter was not a guaran-
tee. Today, we dull our fear of death 
with science and comfort, but the 
harsh wilderness of 17th century 
New England lacked both of those 
luxuries. Instead, the God-fearing 
puritans relied on devout Christi-
anity to make sense of their harsh 
existence. In their world, heaven 
and hell are unquestionably real, 
as are evils that lurk in the woods.

In an inversion of the classic 

“don’t show the monster until the 
end” Spielberg routine, we see the 
witch right away. We’re talking 
classic witch in the woods here 
— this is a gross, wrinkly baby-
devouring witch. She’s not mis-
understood. She’s a fucking evil 
witch, and she’s scary and ugly and 
hangs with the devil. Her purpose? 
To torture a family of excommu-
nicated Christians, struggling to 
make ends meet on a thatched-roof 
farm.

The heart of the film’s dread is a 

youthful fear embodied in some of 
the best performances by children 
I’ve ever seen in a film. Newcom-
ers Anya Taylor-Joy and Harvey 
Scrimshaw bring us back to that 
primal emotional experience we 
had after lying to our mothers or 
stealing an extra cookie after din-
ner — that feeling, lingering for just 
a few minutes, that our dishonesty 

might make us burn in hell for-
ever. As the family descends into 
religious hysteria, we see the terri-
fying implications of how the dog-
matic belief of the parents impacts 
their children.

The power of these scenes 

would not be as effective were it 
not for Eggers’s strict adherence 
to period social customs and man-
ners of speech. Even more impres-
sive is the actors’s delivery of said 
speech, so believable that the dia-
logue maintains a strict separation 
from our contemporary reality, but 
so emotional that we can’t help but 
empathize with the family’s horri-
fying plight.

While it does drag around its 

midpoint, “The Witch” quickly 
maintains pace as slow-burn sym-
phony of familial tension that ends 
in an electrifying coda. Adhering 
to the formalist school of Bergman 
and Kubrick, Eggers and his edi-
tor (newcomer Louise Ford) have 
shaped a thriller that is structur-
ally compelling and nuanced.

It’s wonderful to see so much 

new, hungry talent getting the 
platform they deserve. Films like 
“The Witch” shouldn’t exist, finan-
cially speaking. They’re heavily 
niche products that don’t make a 
lot of money. But thanks to mid-
tier distributors like A24, cinema 
can once again exist between the 
blockbuster and the no-budget 
indie. We need more movies like 
“The Witch.” 

A24

You played yourself.

FILM REVIEW

A-

The Witch

A24

Rave & Quality 16

‘Zootopia’ showcased

By VANESSA WONG

Daily Arts Writer

Move over, New York City; the 

trendiest urban metropolis is now 
none other than “Zootopia,” Dis-
ney’s latest animated brainchild. 
An urban city created by ani-
mals for animals only, “Zootopia” 
marks the largest animated world 
the studio has created to date, with 
double the number of digital mod-
els used in “Big Hero 6.” Matthias 
Lechner, the film’s Art Director 
of Environments spoke about the 
world-building process on Thurs-
day, Feb. 18 on campus in a lecture 
sponsored by the Michigan Ani-
mation Club.

Lechner emphasized that the 

“city should be a character itself:” 
it should feel imaginative, but still 
be grounded in believability — this 
is a modern city, after all. To begin 
the design process, Lechner’s team 
mentally walks through a typical 
city experience from the eyes of an 
animal.

The research started by looking 

into organic architecture shapes, 
particularly the work of Sagrada 
Familia architect Antoni Gaudi. 
The shapes of buildings and city 
planning are informed by ani-
mal behavior and habitats. Zoo-
topia has a city center with outer 
districts representing different 
artificially-created climate zones: 
Bunny Burrow, a hilly, rural coun-
tryside with kid cubbyholes in 
houses for the constantly growing 
bunny families; Sahara Square, a 
slick desert canyon with an active 
nightlife to match its nocturnal 
lifestyle; Tundratown, an icy locale 
with Russian-inspired architec-
ture; Little Rodentia, a model town 

scaled to the size of a mouse and 
the Rainforest District, a towering 
tropical borough. Because animals 
love nature, buildings are organi-
cally integrated into the backdrop.

Lechner believes that “a model 

is successful if ‘life’ is felt, but the 
audience doesn’t really know why.” 
He stressed the importance of cre-
ating a backstory for every single 
detail about the city and how it 
came to be.

To recreate the feel of a city’s 

ever-progressing history, build-
ings showcase different eras of 
architecture while sprinklers arti-
ficially create the rainforest dis-
tricts’ constant showers. The city 
infrastructure contains tall metal 
pipes disguised as plant roots, 
and a plethora of car options fit 
every animal shape and size. The 
team also created a subway map 
connecting the different districts, 
and contemporary products, bill-
boards and advertisements target-
ing specific animal needs peek out 
behind — details seemingly minor, 
but essential enough in building a 
fully fleshed out world that signage 
design merited its own job title. 
Even the flags in Little Rodentia 
are stiffer because they require 
smaller pieces of cloth. This metic-
ulous attention to detail is what 
makes the world of Zootopia burst 
with vibrancy.

Lechner chuckled when a stu-

dent asked about “Easter Eggs” 
— hidden references to other Dis-
ney animated pictures — scattered 
throughout the movie, saying that 
as a parent of a young child, he feels 
confident that “Zootopia” contains 
a wealth of little background sto-
ries to withstand repeat viewings. 
One such instance to watch out for 

is a calendar featuring “Big Hero 
6” ’s San Fransokyo in the police 
chief’s office.

However, it’s important to note 

that environment design is not 
an isolated process. Designers 
and screenwriters work closely 
together at the beginning of the 
filmmaking process, meeting in 
collaborative meetings at least 
every six weeks for critiques so 
that the storyline and animation 
can build off each other and grow 
in the same direction. Though 
Lechner estimated 80 percent 
of designs didn’t make it to the 
final movie, his team can tweak 
elements to fit new storylines. 
For example, a scene featuring 
a Bunny Burrow house was cut, 
but the house design was adapted 
to become the train station in the 
final version of the film.

For every shot, the art direc-

tor oversees sketch creation, 
which the modeling department 
digitally arranges. Next, the looks 
department, supervised by the 
production director, takes these 
basic shapes and adds textures, 
surface colors, and other artifi-
cially created details. The opti-
mization team uses a program to 
bounce light off shapes to further 
render color and detail. The pro-
cess for each scene takes about 
a month and a half, though the 
teams do work on multiple scenes 
concurrently.

A delightfully bumbling tale 

of talking, two-footed animals 
needs an environment with the 
zeal to match. With its large scale 
and lovingly crafted details, “Zoo-
topia” delivers.

“Zootopia” will be released on 

March 4, 2016.

Baroque quartet

By DAYTON HARE

Daily Arts Writer

Music making is, and always 

has been, a communal activity. 
Though we lack an abundance of 
concrete docu-
mentation, 
it 

is likely that 
the very earli-
est instances of 
music making 
involved com-
munities 
of 

people coming 
together to sing 
and play early 
percussion 
instruments. 
Over 
time 
these 
gatherings 

developed in complexity and rit-
ualistic practices — both social 
and spiritual — sprang up around 
them, many of which still exist 
in some form today. However, 
in many tradition music mak-
ing also began to become more 
grandiose, slowly becoming dis-
connected with its communal 
roots. This is arguably the case 
with the European tradition of 
classical music, as is particularly 
evident in the advent of large 
symphonic orchestras and the 
‘opera-as-spectacle’ culture that 
has developed over the last sev-
eral centuries.

Despite all this, the social 

nature of music making is still 
very evident in specific areas, 
notably that of chamber music. 
It is often chamber musicians, 
rather than large ensembles, 
who can be found participating 
in outreach events and com-
munity activities (a fact which, 
granted, has as much to do with 
organizational 
challenges 
as 

ensemble ethos), but chamber 
music’s social nature is perhaps 
most obvious in the closeness of 
the performers.

In the early history of cham-

ber music, often it was played by 
a group of friends for personal 
enjoyment, and in today’s profes-
sional world this is still the case 
for many performers. Ensemble 
Nevermind, the group of friends 
who will be bringing their music 
to Ann Arbor on Wednesday 
evening, is no exception.

“I used to study the modern 

flute for pedagogie, and Baroque 
flute,” Anna Besson, who is the 
flutist of Ensemble Nevermind, 
said in an interview with The 
Michigan Daily. “And Robin, 
the gamba player, and Jean, 

the harpsichord player, used to 
study the viola da gamba and 
harpsichord because it’s really 
[the] early music department.”

Besson went on to explain the 

origins of Ensemble Nevermind 
in more detail, and how the play-
ers metas peers at conservatory.

“So we basically met at Con-

servatoire supérieur de Paris 
… except Louis, we all used to 
study there. We started to play 
together in another ensemble, 
with singers, and finally we just 
found out that it worked very 
well, the four of us,” Besson said. 
“We used to get all together for 
chamber music or for our exami-
nations, for example … we used 
to share our friendship just to 
participate [in] each examina-
tion. And so we decided, because 
we were close friends, to go 
ahead after our studies and start 
something together.”

The four founders of Ensem-

ble Nevermind — Besson, Louis 
Creac’h, Robin Pharo and Jean 
Rondeau — brought the group 
into 
existence 
about 
three 

years ago, creating a perfor-
mance group which special-
izes in chamber music from the 
Baroque period (c. 1600-1750).

“For concerts, of course, it’s 

a quartet, so we can play music 
from, I would say, end of 17th 
century … until, I would say the 
end of [the] 18th century, because 
after this period of course harp-
sichord and viola da gamba 
disappear from orchestras and 
music chambers, because of the 
Revolution.”

In addition to their profes-

sional specialization in Baroque 
and other early music, the 
youthful friends of Ensemble 
Nevermind enjoy playing other 
genres together for recreation.

“For fun, we like to play a lot 

of music, so we improvise a lot 
when rehearsing,” Besson said. 
“It can be like contemporary 
music, or jazz music, or tradi-
tional music, it depends. It helps 
… to relax also.”

Besson also spoke about the 

ensemble’s upcoming perfor-
mance in Ann Arbor this week, 
saying the program to be pre-
sented will largely be for quartet

“In Baroque music ensembles 

you always have a trio, even 
if there are four musicians, 
because two of them are playing 
basso continuo, so they play the 
same part,” Besson said. “And 
we’ve decided to really play 

music for quartet, which means 
that viola da gamba and harpsi-
chord have two separate parts.”

Besson also described some 

of the specific pieces Ensemble 
Nevermind will be performing, 
detailing her history with them 
and talking about the compos-
ers.

“When we decided to read 

the “Paris Quartet,” by [Georg 
Philipp] Telemann, which are 
very [sic] written for quartet, it 
was like really what we wanted 
to do,” Besson said. “Because 
we perform like a string quar-
tet, in fact — there is no leader, 
it is ensemble, we just act like 
if we’re a string quartet. With 
a first violin, second violin, alto 
— ah well, viola — and cello, it’s 
really the same.”

Ensemble Nevermind’s CD of 

Quentin and Guillemain, among 
other composers, will be coming 
out on the 22nd of March, the 
first release of the group.

“[François] 
Couperin 
[is] 

the last composer we will play, 
because sometimes you have the 
continuo with harpsichord and 
viola da gamba, but sometimes 
the gamba also plays a soloist 
part,” Besson said. “So some-
times it’s a trio, sometimes it’s a 
quartet, so this is very interest-
ing, it’s in between.”

Besson also explained some 

of the philosophical reasons 
behind what Ensemble Nev-
ermind does, and the goals of 
the group in terms of societal 
impact.

“Usually people always ask 

‘Why ‘Nevermind?’ ’ And in a 
way — yes we are French, but it 
doesn’t matter, in the sense that 
music belongs to everybody,” 
Besson said. “It doesn’t belong to 
people from 60 years-old, as we 
usually see in the concert hall, 
at least in France. And (the age 
discrepancy) is a pity, because 
we want to touch everybody, and 
especially young people.”

Besson concluded on an opti-

mistic tone, conveying her hope 
that through Ensemble Never-
mind’s music they might change 
the way early music is perceived.

“So maybe, with the fact that 

we have taken some funny pic-
tures, and some videos that 
we’re not wearing black clothes 
— we just want to change a bit 
this vision of Baroque music 
… music belongs to everybody. 
There is not an age to listen to 
Baroque or classical music.”

COMMUNITY CULTURE PREVIEW

Ensemble 
Nevermind

Wed., Feb. 
24, 8 p.m.

Walgreen 

Drama Center

Free

KANYE WEEK
Why I don’t love ’Ye

By KEN SELANDER

Daily Arts Writer

I have a very dirty secret that 

will make most people with a 
musical inclination gasp: I’ve never 
listened to much Kanye. As terrible 
as this might sound, let me reflect 
on how I caught myself commit-
ting such an unspeakable hip-hop 
sin.

You see, there’s a lot of music out 

there in the world — a whole lot. If 
you want to bring out some fancier 
words you could say there’s a pleth-
ora, or perhaps a surplus. So much 
that one doesn’t have time to listen 
to all there is. I’ve never listened 
to The College Dropout or 808s & 
Heartbreak. And yes, of course 
I’ve heard singles like “Heart-
less,” “Jesus Walks” and “The New 
Workout Plan” at a party or in a 
friend’s car. But there’s just so 
much of Yeezy’s discography I 
don’t know. 

Are you angry with me? Or 

just disappointed? That’s OK.

Let me bring the discussion to 

a place you might find yourself, 
too. When I browse around Spo-
tify or YouTube and find some 
tune that will keep me feeling 
good while I’m strolling around 
campus, I don’t just listen to it a 
few times and then put it on the 
shelf. I abuse the song. I listen 
until I know all of the words. I 
press play until I dread the song, 
until I can’t enjoy it for the next 
six months because I’m so sick of 
hearing it by the time I’m done 
with it. I’m currently in the mid-
dle of this process with much of 
the Arctic Monkeys discography 
and Born Sinner by J. Cole.

Listening to a song this fre-

quently, or at least in relation to 
all the other music available, is 
taxing and time consuming. One 
artist I simply haven’t focused 
on is Kanye West, but I do have 
some working knowledge of his 
work because hearing his songs 
is inevitable. While it seems he’s 
advanced to a miraculous level 
of media attention since some-

where around the time he inter-
rupted Taylor Swift at the VMAs, 
his music has been on the radio far 
before that. “Gold Digger,” “Flash-
ing Lights” and “N****s in Paris” 
are prime examples of songs I’ve 
heard despite the dense walls of 
the rock I live under.

Being conscious of my gap in 

popular music knowledge, I fig-
ured I’d give Yeezus a play when it 
came out.

All the hype was there. I figured 

it’d prove to be solid ammunition 
for some future casual conversa-
tions. But man, it was harsh on 
the ears. I had to cut my listening 
short somewhere in the middle 
of “Blood on the Leaves.” For all 
I know, “Guilt Trip” “Send It Up” 
and “Bound 2” may be rad tunes, 
but I wasn’t feeling it. I know what 

Kanye was doing, but he did too 
much: Yeezus was too artificially 
artsy for me to take any joy out of 
it. Kanye was simply trying too 
hard, but then again that’s Kanye 
as I understand it.

Yeezus was not my jam. I said it. 

I’ll start bracing myself for the shit 
storm. 

So as bizarre as it sounds, I’ve 

barely listened to any Kanye and 
I despise Yeezus. I’ll listen to The 
Life of Pablo, though I fear it’ll be 
akin to Yeezus, but appearances by 
Kendrick and Chance the Rapper 
sound appealing. Classic Kanye 
records will definitely make their 
way to my playlist in the coming 
months when I get around to it, but 
as a student there’s only so much 
time to listen to music and I simply 
haven’t prioritized Mr. West. 

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Wednesday, February 24, 2016 — 5A

FILM PREVIEW