Reviews

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  ★★★★ review by nathaxnne walker on Letterboxd

  In the late 1970's, maybe even into the very early 1980's, one of my favorite pastimes was to sit down in front of the television and watch documentaries about biological life at its frontiers, at the fuzzy borders of what was then known and unknown, a place where plant intelligence and perception, the functioning of outer space bodies, the behavioral patterns of bigfeet, whale & dolphin song, alien civilizations, microbiological systems, ESP, reincarnation, all seemed amenable to study with a gentle and patient sense of wonder, a lack of judgement, woozy synthesizer scoring and astonishing computer-driven simulations of complex processes. There was both a reverence and an excitement, an awareness of being on the cusp of knowledge, and of knowing as a good in and of itself, with the possibility that that knowledge would soon be able to transform not only what we knew of life, but how we lived it.

  The Creeping Garden, with its woob/Jim O'Rourke BBC-Radiophonic-Celebrating music and its larger musings on what slime moulds can tell us about pattern and behavior and cognition along with just hanging out with them in wild and domesticated environments calls powerfully to that earlier me, still in that place, back when there was a future to be in a constant state of expectation of, in a readiness of awe, if not awe itself.

  The person that I am, my dad used to call an 'oh, wow!', which he meant pejoratively, as in someone who passively took in stimuli, had their minds and peripheral nervous systems blown and responded to with an 'oh, wow' or maybe later, a 'whoah'. I never understood why that was bad and I am still that person. It is possible that I am fundamentally dull and incurious. I am that person who is more than happy to watch hours and hours of time-lapsed slime-mould footage as they pulse and ooze and feel and think and decide and groove in their space set to spacy whooshing and bleeping and reverbed sound and I will totally be like 'right on, slime-mould dudes!'. The Creeping Garden is not about people like me.

  The Creeping Garden is about people who want to make friends with slime moulds, interact with them, make art and music with them, film them and taxonomize them, find out why and how they do things and build mecha vehicles for them to be inside and drive around as well as robot heads to translate slime mould states into semi-human expression. I am so glad these people exist. I mean, I am not entirely dumb, or at least I didn't use to be, and whatever I used to know about cellular automata recognizes how slime moulds use simple algorithms to engage in very complex behaviours and I am like 'whoah' but the persistence and desire and drive these naturalists and scientists and artists have to communicate, to be along with the slime moulds remind me so much of watching The Secret Life Of Plants or John C. Lily documentaries when I was little that I am overcome with that feeling that maybe there can be a future, not only for humans, but for us all, a future where we can learn to be with each other in ever-complex ways, richer and stranger than we ever thought possible. <3 nathaxnne

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  ★★★½ review by Perry, the Thing Forsaken by God on Letterboxd

  An incredibly bizarre, oddly engrossing documentary about slime molds, the scariest things to ever exist. While the good majority of this is really great, interesting stuff, there are a few lengthy diversions here and there that I feel the film could go without - the art installation/project completely killed the pace, for me.

  Still, it's a good, informative time, and oddly interesting considering it's really eighty minutes of people talking about microscopic slime. Plus, that soundtrack is KILLER.

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  ★★★★ review by Michelle on Letterboxd

  My favorite documentaries explore subjects that I would never be interested in on my own. The stranger and more out of my comfort zone the topic, the more I am drawn to it. And so, that is how I came to watch The Creeping Garden, a British scientific documentary about various kinds of slime molds. Not only was it incredibly engrossing, the way it was filmed appealed to my love of 1970s sci-fi movies, which was an unexpected bonus. 

  While this film definitely features the scientific side of slime molds by employing the knowledge of Mycologysts (people who study fungus), they also get perspectives from unlikely sources such as a composer, a computer scientist, and a robotics engineer. The way slime mold reacts to stimuli can be interpreted in a myriad of ways, and I loved seeing all the different uses for that information. For example, the composer, Eduardo Miranda, uses the mold to send electrical impulses to a piano (via a sort of MIDI interface) and "jams" along with them to create musical compositions. Some people think that science and art have to be mutually exclusive, but this film proves that beauty can be found anywhere you look for it. 

  
  
  What sets this documentary apart is the unique look they picked for both the cinematography and the editing style. The color grading is a retro-looking sepia tone with pops of bright primary colors to accentuate the slime molds. It's reminiscent of films like Invasion of the Body Snatchers or The Blob and it's obvious the directors were making a parallel to those types of films and the almost otherworldly presence of the fungus in real life. There are some absolutely gorgeous time-lapse sequences featuring our slimy friends--they move quite slowly in real-time. Seeing them undulate and ooze out on their paths is unsettling though the fractal-style vectors they travel on are mesmerizing and hypnotic. 

  
  
  
  

  Speaking of the score, Jim O'Rourke (most famous for being in the band Sonic Youth) provided an incredible ambient and experimental electronic backdrop for The Creeping Garden. It sounds very analog and effects heavy, with touches of arpeggiated modular sounds. Luckily for us, Arrow Video was so kind as to include a copy of the score with their video release of the film!

  
  
  I found the experts in this film to be endearing because it's great to see people enjoying their life passions. Even if your life's work is studying slime molds, you can learn a lot from their behavior and apply it to other aspects of human existence. Anyone who is into science or art should definitely take a trip to The Creeping Garden.

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  ★★★★ review by Jason Coffman on Letterboxd

  One of my five favorite documentaries from 2015: medium.com/@rabbitroom/2015-recap-part-2-honorable-mentions-five-favorite-documentaries-five-non-2015-releases-158fa9b39380#.gdh54tj0x

  Obsession frequently makes for compelling documentary material, and when a shared obsession is as utterly strange as the slime mold, it may seem like a big part of a filmmaker’s job is already done for them. Fortunately, co-directors Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp are keen on digging into the outer limits of their subject and present their film beautifully. Slime molds are a fascinating life form, neither plant nor animal, and the people profiled in the film approach the study of the slime mold from a number of unexpected and imaginative angles. There’s straight science, of course, but there are also artists using the slime molds as “collaborators,” and the film’s mix of different worlds is its biggest strength. The evocative ambient score by Jim O’Rourke and Woob and some stunning time-lapse photography all help make THE CREEPING GARDEN one of the most unique and entertaining documentaries of the year.

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  ★★★★ review by Jason Coffman on Letterboxd

  Obsession frequently makes for compelling documentary material, and when a shared obsession is as utterly strange as the slime mold, it may seem like a big part of a filmmaker’s job is already done for them. Fortunately, co-directors Tim Grabham and Jasper Sharp are keen on digging into the outer limits of their subject and present their film beautifully. Slime molds are a fascinating life form, neither plant nor animal, and the people profiled in the film approach the study of the slime mold from a number of unexpected and imaginative angles. There’s straight science, of course, but there are also artists using the slime molds as “collaborators,” and the film’s mix of different worlds is its biggest strength. The evocative ambient score by Jim O’Rourke and Woob and some stunning time-lapse photography all help make THE CREEPING GARDEN one of the most unique and entertaining documentaries of the year.

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