Neighbours and Norman McLaren

Animazioni is an interesting exhibition at MAN, Museo d’arte Provincia di Nuoro, curated by Lorenzo Giusti – MAN’s director – and Elena Volpato  – GAM, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin – on video and animation works by Scottish/Canadian artist Norman McLaren. Norman McLaren started working in 1933, he took part as cameraman in the Spanish Civil War, and in 1941 he arrived at the National Film Board of Canada, where he spent the rest of his life realizing most of his works. I would like to spend a few words on Neighbours, his masterpiece, arranging an analysis by using what Roger Odin wrote about McLaren’s video in his book De la Fiction.

Still from video, Neighbours (1952), Norman McLaren.

Neighbours is a fable. Two men (neighbours) live in peace in a pleasant place, everything is beauty, until – quietly but suddenly – everything changes: a beautiful flower starts spreading its incredible, sweet fragrance in the air. Both men want the flower, they forget about civilized coexistence, and start fighting for it.

Neighbours has a specular symmetric structure: Peace certain if no War; War certain if no Peace. 

These are the specular messages written on the two protagonists’ newspapers. The video shows a stereotyped reality, split into two parts: two houses, two gentlemen, but only one flower.

Still from video, Neighbours (1952), Norman McLaren,

The flower growing in the middle of the scene is a marigold, and it is a multitasking image. In the flower we can recognize the source of a conflict. Marigold is also a goddess name, for whom men should fight. The gentlemen start fighting hard, and McLaren shows how war can be cruel: the fighters kill women and babies, destroy houses and lands. In a short lapse of time, everything goes worst.

Still from video, Neighbours (1952), Norman McLaren,

At the end, when everything is damaged or destroyed, the war ends, and with it the film. And the overall, obvious moral seems to be:

Love your neighbours.

Norman McLaren, Animazioni at MAN, Nuoro through November 3rd, 2013