- Two cowboys in the desert experience a drug-like dream.
- In an animated landscape of the Old West, a reflective man is the partner of what seems to be his spectral doppelgänger. As the man drinks, lies around, and waits for the good, then waits for anything, then fails, the doppelgänger takes up with a woman with long hair. She's playful and open, and he takes advantage of her trust. Can there be a healing and rebirth? What will bring it?—<jhailey@hotmail.com>
- The film is animated in black and white -- just those two tones, not halftone or grayscale, with the one exception of the sky. Any seeming shades of gray are produced using hatching techniques, except for the sky, which is drawn using similar hatching patterns but using grayscale. There is no dialogue; the only sounds we hear are the musical score, the Foley effects, occasional nonverbal vocalizations from the characters, and the very sparse narration.
"We never fell. We never even stumbled. We just waited for the spirits to rise from out of the ground."
The first event on screen is the shattering of a black bottle, which we quickly learn is an empty bottle -- the film makes very deliberate and careful use of its two chosen tones. A white (full) bottle rises out of the ground, and then the camera tracks out to reveal the two main characters of the film: apparent cowboys, sitting in the shade of a boulder in the desert. The one on the left appears to be an experienced cowboy, dressed mostly in black, twirling his six-gun expertly after having shot the empty bottle, and the portion of the boulder he sits in front of is taller. The one on the right, dressed partly in white, appears to be more inept and uncertain -- the "black hat" cowboy immediately grabs the full bottle, then the "white hat" cowboy then holds out his hands and is rewarded with a drop of whatever is in the bottle, which the "black hat" cowboy then guzzles until it is empty. He then stands up, puts his black cowboy hat on, and strikes a bowlegged cowboy pose. The "white hat" cowboy tries to copy him but can only do so clumsily.
"And we waited for firelight. From a distance."
Here is where things get visually surreal. Their arms over each other's shoulders, the two cowboys mosey past sexual imagery, perhaps indicating that they've headed into town and are hitting the saloons and bordellos. The "black hat" cowboy ends up with a woman on each arm, while the "white hat" cowboy finds himself holding the string of a suggestive heart-shaped balloon. But the "black hat" cowboy has a destination, and when he reaches her, he discards his two erstwhile companions. She is an elegant woman in a black dress, most likely a prostitute, standing by the entrance to a small building, a fire burning on the ground in front of her. This may be the "firelight" mentioned in the narration. "Black Hat" takes on a gunfighter's stance, while "White Hat," who has been following along, grabs his suggestive balloon protectively, with slight comedic effect.
"And we waited for a secret from afar."
The woman holds out a surreally thin arm with no apparent hand. Black Hat takes out a coin and gives it to White Hat, smiling. White Hat, looking uncertain, steps forward, tosses the coin in the air, takes out his gun, and tries to shoot the coin with it. His bullet misses, and the coin bounces off the woman's outstretched arm and falls into the fire. He turns and trudges away dejectedly.
Black hat, still smiling, takes out another coin, spins it around in his fingers, tosses it in the air, deftly takes out his gun, twirls it around, and fires, shooting the coin straight through the middle, making a hole in it, and as it falls it then slips easily onto the woman's arm. She holds it up to look, then bends down, blows out the fire on the ground, and leaps inside her building. Black Hat saunters in after her, leaving White Hat outside. He tiptoes to the window, his balloon squeaking, and sees a scary face inside, which opens its eye to look at him, making him panic and pop his balloon. He then turns away and sees a line forming of other cowboys, spinning coins in their fingers and waiting their turns. He saunters away, trying to play it cool, but once he is past them he starts to walk faster, then run away, from this frightening place.
White Hat then encounters a surreally-drawn nude woman standing beside a tub for bathing in. He gets in the tub, and, picking up a bucket, the woman holds it to her hair, which is apparently made of water, filling the bucket. When she pours the water over him, he is transformed, fully white, without a hat, and his expression is one of bliss. But then the bucket is empty, and he looks like his old self again. He gestures that he wants more water, and she fills the bucket again, pouring it over White Hat with the same effect -- only this time we see the scene framed from between Black Hat's legs. Zipping up his pants and tossing his hat back on his head, he shows off for the water woman.
White Hat get out of the tub and puts his arm over Black Hat's shoulders, walking with him and pointing toward some of the dancing girls and other distractions they had walked by earlier, but Black Hat's head turns back toward the water woman.
"But much more, we waited for beauty, from somewhere way beyond."
White Hat sits in the boulder's shadow again, holding an empty black bottle, and looks at the water woman's full bucket of water lying nearby on the ground. Then he looks back around the rock, where Black Hat seems to be showing the water woman how to be a cowboy, showing her how to walk with a cowboy-like bowlegged stance and giving her a gun. White Hat, meanwhile, tosses the black bottle into the air and tries to shoot it with his gun, but again misses. He puts his gun away again. Black Hat shows the water woman how to twirl and shoot a gun, and she learns quickly -- when Black Hat throws an empty bottle into the air, she shoots it and breaks it on the first attempt. Black Hat and the water woman mosey away, and she drinks from a bottle as she walks. She encounters White Hat sitting by the rock and offers him the half-full bottle.
"And while we waited, our spirits, they ran lower and lower."
Before White Hat can accept or decline the bottle, Black Hat returns with a cowboy hat and a gun belt, which he puts on the water woman, who is still surreally nude otherwise. The two of them mosey off together, leaving White Hat alone by the rock.
"And then we waited for the firelight to come closer."
White Hat moseys after them, catching up to them, but Black Hat spins a coin in his hand, tosses it in the air, then shoots it with his gun, and it falls onto the arm of the woman in black, who blows out her fire and invites White Hat into her building. He approaches the building, allowing Black Hat and the water woman to walk away.
"And then we waited for that secret to draw near."
White Hat enters the building, where the woman in black uses the coin to start what appears to be a mechanical piano player, which starts to play the piano and seems to be the face at the window that frightened White Hat earlier when he looked in. The woman lets her hair down, White Hat takes off his hat, and the woman in black spreads her dress with a sexually suggestive graphical effect. But White Hat can only stare in horror. The camera pans away past more surreal sexual imagery to show the water woman again, still dressed in a cowboy hat.
"But much more, we waited for beauty to touch us from somewhere way beyond."
The water woman begins to walk toward the hill where she has her bathtub, but Black Hat grabs her arm and tugs her toward a black building with a black door. Inside the building there are many people engaging in a surreal sexual dance. They are black on a black background, drawn with white lines. The water woman stares horrified at this and tries to pull away, but Black Hat grabs her arm violently, causing her cowboy hat to fall off and her watery hair to flow freely again. He sticks out his tongue and starts to drink the water of her hair just as he had guzzled the bottle down in the first scene. This is intercut with imagery of the surreal dance and with Black Hat surrounded by waves of water. When he is done, the water woman is bald, and smudged with black as if she is now dirty. She begins to topple over listlessly.
The mechanical piano player's song ends, and it shuts itself down as the woman in black's hair puts itself back up. White Hat runs from her home, the look of horror still on his face, and now the sky is a radiating pattern of shifting grays and whites; these gray shades appear to be grayscale as opposed to small hatched black lines that merely appear gray from a distance. White Hat stops running to look around, and we see the woman in black emerge from her home in the background and relight her fire. The water woman's cowboy hat blows by in the wind, and White Hat catches it, staring at it. Then he looks and sees her, her hair gone and her arms crossed in front of her, looking dirty and desolate. He offers her the hat, but she just turns away. He drops the hat and takes off his jacket, offering her that instead.
"But then, we just got tired of waitin'."
Waiting by some of the more egregious pieces of sexual imagery, Black Hat sees the water woman walking slowly away with White Hat's jacket around her. He tries to get her attention, but she ignores him.
"And then we stumbled."
White Hat follows after the water woman, and Black Hat tries to get his attention too, but fails again; White Hat ignores him too.
"And then we fell."
Black Hat goes back through all the surreal sexual imagery to the woman in black's home, takes out a coin, and tries to spin it but drops it. Horrified, he looks down at his failure, but he picks it up, throws it in the air, and tries to shoot it, but fails, and it falls into the fire. He turns the gun toward his face, and the woman turns to go, but he chases her and grabs her, and tries to reach the center of her dress's suggestive graphic effect with his tongue, but she screams and knocks him away, then puts out her fire and goes inside her home. Black Hat kneels on the ground in despair, his hands over his eyes.
"When once we had got tired of waiting, when once we had stumbled and fallen, suddenly, new spirits, they started to rise from out of the ground."
Images of White Hat's smiling face appear, wavering strangely, and we hear the splashing of water, but what we then see is happening is that he is looking at his reflection in the water woman's bucket. He looks up to see her standing not far away, looking as desolate as ever, then walks over to her with the bucket, sets it down, takes a handful of water from the bucket and washes her face with it. This removes the smudges on her face, and her eyes open and she looks around. He takes more water from the bucket as she removes the jacket from her shoulders, and he washes more black smudges from her body. As the camera pulls back we see him continuing to use the water from the bucket to clean her body, and she removes the gun belt from her waist. This is an inversion of the earlier scene when she was pouring water over White Hat's head, and in fact as we pull away we begin to see this scene from between Black Hat's legs just as before, only this time his legs are kneeling on the ground, another inversion of that scene. The camera fades to black.
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