Delirium

Directed by Lawrence Jordan

There is a hint of an under water circus, and many of the performers are acrobats. The sea water, if that's what it is, is yellowish brown. A full-faced sun rises from the Sun King's cradle, while a moon of Saturn circles the planet. The cut-out animation moves airily through a time-distorted world, where dizziness barely maintains a balance, and conventional time-sense disappears. The music of John Davis, which has been slowed to half speed, reverberates eerily throughout the pulsing series of performances, and one wonders whether in the next scene one can catch one's balance. The timing throughout is musical, and suggests a barely upheld world of sanity; of course the dream world creeps into the conscious mind's puritanical sense of propriety, rendering a secondary sense of unbalance facing trial at the bar of...whatever comes to mind. Delirium?