There’s a lovely weirdness to Albert Birney’s films. Strawberry Mansion imagined a near future world where dreams were audited: which sounds like a horror film, but in actuality became a masterpiece of imagination, adventure, and romance. While OBEX doesn’t delve into romance it is like its predecessor, it is a masterpiece of imagination and adventure which is filled with an earnest humanity. Co-written and shot by the fantastic Pete Ohs, OBEX is an 8-bit fantasy and a true hero’s journey for its anxiety riddled and agoraphobic protagonist.
Conor Marsh (Albert Birney) is a withdrawn ASCII artist in 1987 who lives his life via a series of screens. Television screens, computer screens, and in his bedroom a monitor which plays a fireplace screensaver. Pre internet for the masses Conor doesn’t find a community through his Apple computer, instead he is drawn to the technology as a means to ameliorate and extend his lack of human contact.
Conor is filled with anxiety about the outside world. His only ‘friend’ is Mary (Callie Hernandez) a neighbour who gets his groceries for him once a week leaving them on his front porch (he doesn’t open the door) and his most excellent dog Sandy who one day wandered into his back yard and never left. There’s a huge cicada plague in the area making outside filled with that high pitched and never-ending hum. Inside Conor can control his waking world if not his unconscious.
His dreams are abstract. He’s driving his deceased mother’s car with her in the back. A mother who perhaps over mothered him. His home was her home and at the age of 36 he’s already retreated from relationships that could disappoint him. He has retreated from the world where his father died in unlikely circumstances and a world that obviously disappointed his mother.
Browsing through a magazine Conor finds a computer RPG (something along the lines of Zelda or Dungeon Master) and orders it. The difference between OBEX and other games is the makers will create a digital version of yourself if you give them some reference images and answer a bunch of questions. Conor’s videotape to the makers is sweetly melancholy – “There’s not much to tell,” about himself he says to the camera. There’s not much that can be said by Conor about his life because there isn’t much that he’s really considered about it.
The game arrives and it seems like a fraud - his avatar can’t do anything it only moves to his horse named after Sandy and points to his castle. Like in real life there is no movement that lets him go beyond those two points. He moves the program into the trash and goes on with his life – taping A Nightmare on Elm Street and warding off the occasional cicada that crosses the threshold into his home.
Reality breaks down and when Sandy goes missing after the soul eating demon Ixaroth from OBEX enters his house via the TVs. Finding and saving Sandy draws Conor outside of his house and garden and suddenly he’s drawn into a live action version of the game where Mary is also situated as a fairy/elf who owns the two magic shops in the kingdom of Obex.
Conor isn’t really equipped to be a hero and saviour, but his strength comes from the absolute belief that he has to care for his canine partner. In a seemingly unending forest where time works differently and the map notes areas such as The Nightmare Realm (Ixaroth’s castle is located there), the Peaks of Peril and the Valley of Bones. Conor’s strength also emerges when he saves an RCA Victor television set (Frank Mosley) from Ixaroth’s army of humanoid cicadas.
OBEX unfurls like the map of the kingdom – magical, mysterious, dangerous, and a land where the unconscious must nestle against the conscious for Conor to have any chance of surviving and being the hero. As Victor becomes his guide and fellow traveller Conor and he share their histories and dreams. In discussing heaven Victor imagines it as a place where televisions are allowed to watch people. For Conor it’s simply spending a day on the beach with Sandy. A simple goal but one which heretofore was impossible for him.
Shot in black and white with an astounding eye for period detail (people of a certain age are going to know the whir of a dot matrix printer) Birney’s film is lo-fi high fantasy in the best imaginable manner. Beyond the sheer gorgeousness of the work is the delicate, funny, frightening, and humanistic script which speaks of how fear and anxiety can be passed on from generation to generation, but also to the ability to shed that anxiety by facing your demons (metaphorically literal and actual).
It is nigh on impossible not to love a movie which is radically uncommercial made by a bunch of clever oddballs in their (actual) backyards which houses such a depth of emotion and relatable depictions of loneliness and isolation. OBEX is Albert Birney once again proving his singular talent for telling the truth through arcane metaphor. Superb.
Director: Albert Birney
Cast: Albert Birney, Callie Hernandez, Frank Mosley
Writers: Albert Birney, Pete Ohs
Producers: James Belfer, Albert Birney, Emma Hannaway, Pete Ohs
Cinematography: Pete Ohs
Editors: Albert Birney, Pete Ohs
Music: Josh Dibb