Filme im Fokus The Thomas Beale Ciphers (Andrew Allen, 2010)

But first, see for yourself:

Background: The Beale Cipher as a modern puzzle – or a big hoax?

The Beale Cipher goes back to the writing “The Beale Papers”, which is said to lead to a treasure hidden by a Thomas J. Beale in 1820/22 via three ciphers. So far, only the second of the three ciphers could be decrypted using the American Declaration of Independence. Some exciting background information is available in “The Hunters of the Encrypted Treasure” by Klaus Schmeh and in “A Modern Take on an Old Mystery by Jane Doh – because it is not at all certain how much of the story is actually true. If you really want to get to the bottom of it, you will find plenty of reading material in “Beale Ciphers Analyses” by Ron Gervais.

The film takes up this legend and follows a Professor White in his attempts to escape his pursuers – he seems to have cracked the cipher. But you should not expect any answers from “The Thomas Beale Ciphers” – or should you? Because the film itself is a cipher – 16 clues are hidden that can reveal the secrets of the characters. On Facebook, the discoveries are discussed (spoiler alert!). An intelligent trick – a film about a cipher itself becomes a cipher. A meta-cipher, so to speak, a godsend for postmodern thinkers. I start with it when my brain cells have stopped looking for clues and their meaning…

Aesthetics: Rotoscopy with a special twist

Visually, the film relies on old-school animation, implemented by rotoscoping, in which filmed motion sequences are traced step by step for the animation, combined with textures of paper and fabrics. This results in an exciting mixture, reminiscent of modern graphic design, that I have never seen in this form in an animated film before. Rotoscoping has made an unexpected comeback in animated films of the post-2000 era thanks to films like “A Scanner Darkly”, but Allen’s hand-drawn figures, with their interplay of schematic simplification on the one hand and great attention to detail on the other, give the process a new direction. At the same time, he uses his aesthetics for new purposes, for example when he reflects White’s complicated chain reaction calculations on his glasses.

[via Spreeblick]