Anderson unbound

TAKE ONE, Dec-Feb, 1999

Anderson Unbound Directed by Sheldon Serkin, written by Randall Cole. Canadian Film Centre, 1999. 17 min., 16mm.

When nebbish salesman Anderson (played to Woody Allenish perfection by David Boyce) takes a seminar on conflict management, his life is transformed. With the application of a few short, snappy phrases and techniques, Anderson discovers, all of life's senseless conflicts can be resolved. After the seminar, he encounters two men fighting in a nearby park. Now a trained mediator, Anderson decides he must intervene, armed not only with good intentions, but also with, as he remembers proudly via the film's clever use of intertitles, the very latest conflict management strategies. Kinetic and only a little too long, Serkin's deftly directed film skewers a society hopelessly obsessed with experts, self-help gurus and consultants who have convinced us that only they can help us to help ourselves. Located somewhere between the breakneck cartoony violence of Tex Avery and the smart pop-culture satire of John Paizs, Anderson Unbound supplies ample, hilarious proof that, in a world where U.S. Presidents talk about using words to settle disputes at the very moment they are bombing others, talk is indeed cheap. Alas, it would seem that conflict management seminars, while very expensive, are cheaper still.