The animated, dialogue-free film Space Cadet is part of this years Generation Kplus program and is centered around the beautiful relationship between the young girl Celeste and her guardian Robot. We had the chance to meet up with director Eric San at a café close to Filmtheater am Friedrichshain after one of the screenings. Sadly, we had to cut a majority of the fascinating and very pleasant, one-hour-long conversation. Here are some excerpts on the film, it’s themes, music and history and on the way kids deal with complex emotions.
Freie Generation Reporter:innen (FGR): In general, how are you enjoying the Berlinale so far? How are the different screenings?
Eric San: The premiere at HKW was wonderful. There was a full house, a thousand people or something, and just that real electric energy because it’s literally the first humans on the planet to see the film, a big screen and beautiful sound system. So that was a dream, absolutely. If you’re in a room that actually has families in it and to hear the children’s laughter. In those moments that you know were for them and then when you hear, oh, it worked, that’s great. It melts your heart a little bit, in a good way.
FGR: So, you originally come from the DJ scene, from music, and mainly worked as a musician in recent years?
San: I started playing music when I was four years old. Classical piano, that was my first instrument. When I was around 12 years old, I was introduced to the turntable scratch scene, and I got super into that all through until now. After university, I signed my first record contract and I was touring around as a scratch DJ. (…)
But simultaneously, I was being invited to contribute music to some films and video games and stuff, so that started the idea of being more in composition.
What happened to lead up to this film existing is, I released a graphic novel called Space Cadet back in 2011 that was a dialogue-free also. It came with a CD at the time and in certain pages, you could play a song, and it would kind of give you the music for that scene. (…)
We did a tour when that book launched, and the producer Jeanette Petit, saw the show, she bought the book from the merch booth, she went home, listened to the CD and basically called me two weeks later and said: I want to see if we can turn this into a feature film. And I was like, whoa, really?
FGR: Could you give an overview on what the film is about?
San: (…) The themes are based around the cycles of generations. The characters are a guardian robot, and a little girl named Celeste and she has a keen interest in outer space, so she grows up to be a great astronaut. Pretty early in the film, she graduates from her space academy and goes off in a one-person spacecraft to a faraway galaxy. Robot is left behind, kind of empty nest, with no one to look after anymore.
You follow the two characters and their adventures, even though there’s so much distance between them. Through flashbacks, you start to piece together this special bond and connection that they have.
Robot is trying to find out how to fill his days, now that he doesn’t have a kid to guard, to raise. And meanwhile, Celeste is having the time of her life, doing these great space adventures, as you should at that age. But then at one point, she’s stranded on a desolate planet, very far off in space, and it becomes apparent that the main objective at that point is to try to find a way back home.
I think built into the film is that idea of cherishing those memories with loved ones and realizing how important and impactful they can be. At the time it might have just been a five-minute situation. For me it was when my father showed me he could draw. I was six years old and we were at a restaurant, and he just started drawing on the napkin, really blueprint-ready, not photorealistic, but very detailed.
(…) And I remember being like, wait, you can draw? I think he kind of opened that possibility of pursuing art whether he knew he was doing that or not.
FGR: What differences did you notice in the way of storytelling, comparing the film and the graphic novel?
San: To me, writing or reading a graphic novel is a time-based experience. However, the time is very much up to the reader (…) while in film you’re delivering the pacing of information at a certain rate. Which both allows different types of comedy. (…)
Also, what I did like about doing that graphic novel, if there was a pause or a moment of reflection that I was trying to create in the reading process, I would do a full spread, two-page, of just one image. And that can slow down the time a bit. When we went to film, I still wanted to leave some of that space in the film.
In certain scenes, the pacing was designed to hopefully give the audience a moment to reflect like, hey, I remember a memory from my childhood that is similar to this. So, if the pacing of it was really full on, and we filled every corner of the frame with information, and objects, and props, and stuff in the background, it would be too much.
(…) For me, the point was, it’s an idea of remembrance, it’s a metaphor for it and people have the space to engage with it that way.
FGR: What was your approach in writing the music that portrays Celeste and Robert and their shared story?
San: (…) It took me two years to finish the music for the original graphic novel and in that time I was awaiting two things that happened.
My grandmother passed away, she was very dear to me. (…) That was on my mind, the idea of these shared moments I had with my parents and also my grandma.
But then also being excited about my daughter arriving and becoming a new parent, being nervous and excited about that. (…) I’d actually sometimes hold her in my arm and to try not to wake her, play her the kind of lullabies on the piano. So, when I hear some of those sentimental or comforting themes, I remember a moment like that. (…)
But then I also wanted very futuristic and new sounds too.
Depending on what the scene was, obviously, as Celeste gets deeper into space, I would pull out the synthesizers and the more modern instruments. While for the old-timey stuff I would try to use literally old instruments, play like a 120-year-old piano to get those tones in.
One of the other themes was the robot. He’s sort of at the end of his life cycle now that Celeste’s launched off, and he’s starting to malfunction a bit, especially in the memory department. He’s getting a little clunky, doesn’t move as fast as the new robots, and kind of approaching obsolescence. In a way, I wanted his sound palette to be quirky, because he provides a lot of the levity and humor in the film. He’s a little bit of a fun, silly character. I would use a lot of dusty instruments, maybe slightly out of tune on purpose, or scratch the instruments in to just give it a little surreal skip.
FGR: On that note, why robots?
San: I grew up always being fascinated by technology and robots, I remember getting an arm matron, it was called, and my uncle gave me this robot arm that you could control, and it would just pick up this solid container and do whatever you wanted. And it was just so fun and futuristic at the time. (…)
But when I am drawing, I actually find it quite difficult to draw humans. Robots are a little more simplified, right? (…) It’s trying to get maximum emotion out of the most more simplified design, which is sometimes it’s a delicate thing to balance.
FGR: It’s not common to trust children of that age to deal with such complex emotions that aren’t very represented maybe in the common animated feature films, don’t you think?
San: (…) I think generally speaking, people don’t give kids enough credit. Their empathy levels are very high. Their idea of justice is very high. They’re sensitive, fully emotionally aware beings.
I don’t think in terms of everything having to be happy or sad necessarily. I think this film works in the space between a little bit. (…) And I feel like I agree with you that in a lot of animated film that is targeted towards young audiences, they make it more colorful, more fast, more loud, more silly, more stretchy and whatever. But I don’t always think that it has to be that one way.
FGR: We think, you really managed to create an eye level with the young audience, trusting them to deal with also some heavier topics. With the robot, it felt like he dealt with depression or some kind of dementia, like Alzheimer’s.
San: (…) I didn’t want to make it too explicit. But all those things are happening around kids with grandparents. But if you can kind of package it in a way that stays empathetic and you can relate to, hopefully it’s a way to maybe get kids or families to talk about it.
Also, referring back to those bittersweet emotions, I think it’s very precious to allow children to have access to these emotions because I feel like it helps to appreciate things more.
Life is complex sometimes, and I think that’s okay.
You don’t have to be afraid of it.
I remember back in my teaching days we had a pet rabbit and at one point it passed away. That morning the kids, they were wrecked. Everybody was like, okay, I guess we’re just writing off the whole day and that’s just the saddest thing that could have happened. But then as we were discussing how everybody was feeling, we decided to do an activity. Instead of staying in the bleak side of it and how much we miss the rabbit in the classroom, can we let everybody make a drawing? You know, your favorite memory from having that rabbit with us in class.
And the kids were just drawing their own memories for it. When we collected all of these memories, it was really flooring me in terms of the beauty that they had in their hearts for it and that they were able to articulate that feeling through art. Once they shared and presented it, all the kids just felt better.
To me, the film, yes, it does deal with the cycles of generations and losing a dear one or a family member or something like that. But it’s less about focusing on the passing on part and more about celebrating the time that you had and how valuable that is.
