Crumbs (2015)

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Siskoid
They showed the "hellmouth" in Ethiopia on Netflix's "Alien Worlds" and I wondered why I'd never seen it in a movie as it looked like another planet (I imagine volcanic plains are pretty dangerous). Well, Crumbs starts there, though as a manifestation of the film's postapocalyptic setting. Which might as well be today, by Ethiopian standards. Home of a once thriving empire, the film uses it as a mix of nuclear landscape, decaying infrastructure and standing ruins, in which our hero quests for Santa Claus with the hope of being sent to a mysterious hovering spaceship so he can go home (he will learn what home really is). So it's quite strange, and proposes a culture that's something like postmodern voodoo, also a bizarre mix that includes everyday objects that have lost their original meanings and have become mystical in the process. Though its writer-director is Spanish, he is tapping into what a lot of Afrofuturism seems to be about, i.e. a longing for a lost Eden by a people who feel displaced even in their own homes, which may or may not translate into disappointment when the Eden is found/recreated. Crumbs is intriguing and sweet, but also enigmatic. On the one hand, I like its world-building, on the other, it may leave too many questions unanswered. 3 years 3 months ago