Cotton Candy
Film200256m
Where to watch
Details
- Director
- Ernie Gehr
- Language
- English
- Released
- 2002-04-30
- Runtime
- 56m
Community score
Confidence
Rating weighted by how many people voted
Actor Hub
Scene work for this title — private technique journals.
Open journal →The story
Gehr uses a mini-digital recorder to look back on the Machine Age in the form of San Francisco's soon-to-be-shuttered Musee Mecanique. For slightly more than an hour, Cotton Candy documents this venerable collection of coin-operated mechanical toys—including an entire circus—mainly in close-up, isolating particular details as he alternates between ambient and post-dubbed (or no) sound. By treating the Musee's cast of synchronized figures as puppets, the artist is making a show—but is it his or theirs? Gehr's selective take on the arcade renders it all the more spooky. There's a sense in which Cotton Candy is a gloss on the moment in The Rules of the Game when the music-box-collecting viscount unveils his latest and most elaborate acquisition. (It also brings to mind the climax of A.I.: The DV of the future tenderly regards the more human machine of the past.) (J. Hoberman, The Village Voice)
The room
Ask. Discuss. Find the next one.
Stay with Cotton Candy: ask what it is actually doing, talk it through, then follow the traits that made it land.
Ask
Talk it through
Grounded in the film — and in your map, when you have one.
Try asking
3 free asks left without an account.
Actor journal
Private scene work lives in Actor Hub — not on this title page.
Characters
Star up to 5 favourites in Cotton Candy. Rank them if you want — picks feed Cinematic DNA; journals stay private.
