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Brooke Keesling on Doxology | Sunday, April 6 2008

Michael Langan’s Doxology provides non-stop sparkly goodness from start to finish. A scintillating combination of intriguing visuals and extremely thoughtful sound design, Doxology is at once atmospheric, puzzling and oddly musical; it is also my absolute favorite short film of 2007.

I’ll never forget the first time I saw this dazzling film, in a large, beautiful theater at the Ottawa International Animation Festival, with a packed audience; I think we were collectively amazed by the time the final credits began to roll. Similarly, as the premiere film on opening night of the 2008 Ann Arbor Film Festival, Doxology delivered in spades yet again. While Doxology will definitely hold up on a smaller screen, a pleasure to view on any device, I recommend trying to catch it in a theater who will project it on film; that’s where this piece really shines and becomes an all-encompassing spiritual journey.

The funny thing about Doxology is that, while it certainly contains a spiritual component, it does not feel preachy in any way. This film is comprised of seemingly unrelated vignettes from preppy boys with deadpan expressions pelting tennis balls into the heavens, to spinning, levitating carrots with bitten chunks floating mysteriously away, to a human cannon whose function is to alternately belch and catch tennis balls between his mouth and gut. From this description, it would seem like there is no way that this film could hold together, but the opposite is true: Doxology provides no solid answers, instead it leaves the viewer free to wonder and wander into their own mind, to ask those infinite, unanswerable, universal questions.

Although I’m enamored with so many of the enigmatic visuals in Doxology (particularly the mesmerizing shaving Shiva cycle), on an emotional level, the exchange between the furrowed-brow protagonist and the tropical drink sipping, snowbathing deity is the quintessential moment of this film. Without dialogue or high drama, the acting in this exchange is subtle and it effectively communicates an important sentiment about finding contentment wherever and whatever your circumstance.

Doxology concludes in a positive, satisfying manner with a final shot of the sole-surviving preppy tennis player, anxiously awaiting the final ball to drop, with his racket cocked and ready. He looks up toward the heavens, pauses, smiles, and then happily walks off screen. An extremely pleasurable 6 minutes and 10 seconds after the film began, Doxology is finished but our minds are left to explore.