Undone
Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg & Kate Purdy
Directed by Hisko Hulsing
Starring Rosa Salazar, Angelique Cabral, Constance Marie, Siddharth Dhananjay, Daveed Diggs, Bob Odenkirk
Undone is Amazon’s first original animated feature, and it’s hard to imagine a better start.
Alma Winograde nearly dies in a car crash, and awakens with strange new ways of knowing things and the seeming ability to travel through time. She encounters her father, who died when she was about ten years old, who reveals to her that his own car crash may have been no accident, and that he suspects he may have been murdered.
Alma not only has to master her abilities to manipulate and maneuver through time, but also deal with the intricate and complex relationships she has with her sister, her mother, and her boyfriend. All are having mounting concerns about her sanity, and she herself isn’t entirely sure that what she is experiencing is anything more than schizophrenia.
The level of writing in this complex, densely layered story is superb (it scored 100 on Rotten Tomatoes and got a rating of “widespread acclaim” from Metacritics) and that it all fit in a total of 160 minutes of run time is a small miracle.
While it is animated, it’s actually a rotoscoping of live-action. This is not my favorite medium; the characters look completely human while managing to be entirely non-human, a creepy combination. The style has advanced since Polar Express, at least. The eyes appear much more human, not dead and flat. The outlines, particularly around the lips, profile shots (and freckles on one character) are distracting, but not fatally so.
The story deftly combines native spirituality, quantum entanglement, and the limits of quotidian existence in a manner that is both sophisticated and approachable. Most efforts to explain time displacement are either a lead weight of unconvincing exposition, or pure technobabble, but Undone manages to avoid such side-tracks. Similarly, the relationships amongst the characters are complex, convoluted and evolving, but are easy to follow and avoid the soap opera elements.
A truly superior series.
Now on Amazon Prime.