**Click here to read an interview with director Bruce Petty**
In Global Haywire, Australian writer, director and animator Bruce Petty says he’s telling the story of what’s wrong with the world via cartoons because no-one’d believe it otherwise.
But the problem is, it’s a story we’ve heard before - namely that the West, or specifically, the United States is to blame for pretty much everything.
The film uses a structure that has a committee of live-action actors investigating the phenomenon of 'Global Haywire". They discover in the archives the animated character of Vince, an inventor who’s tried to build the perfect freedom machine. But alas, the elite in the machine’s 'A Deck" are forever separated from the masses in 'B Deck", and the ship itself is a self-destruction device.
Petty’s animations are interspersed with news footage and sound bites from academics and students. Even though it uses the usual left-leaning subjects, there are penetrating observations from some of the talking heads.
Middle East correspondent Robert Fisk has walked the talk, while author Arundjhuti Roy, combines elegant expression and activist passion like no other. And some of Petty’s animations are entertaining and poignant in his anarchic fashion. But for me Global Haywire is too simplistic and scattershot.
Watching this movie you’d think the Cold War was only waged by the US, and that these days China and India have little role to play in world affairs. The film doesn’t seem interested in this sort of complexity.
Equally problematic is the fact that Global Haywire’s animations and interviews don’t complement each other visually or narratively. It made me want a wild animated satire that went for the jugular, or a proper documentary that tried to tell us something new.
As a well-meant but dissatisfying bit of animated agitprop, Global Haywire rates 2.5 stars.
