The Arbalest will make you question what’s real
Director Adam Pinney discusses his twisty feature about obsession, invention, and relationships
Albert Lamorisse, the director of The Red Balloon, also created the board game Risk. That’s a real fact I learned from the new film The Arbalest. I didn’t believe it at first. It sounds made up. Adam Pinney’s feature, which won the grand jury prize at the South by Southwest Film Festival last month, focuses on a lonely and obsessive toy designer. The film twists fact and fiction liberally throughout its 80 minutes. Real toys appear with fake names and fictional backstories, a fake game that shares the movie’s title boasts the real-life history of the game it’s based on (Pinney couldn’t get the rights to Risk), and scenes set in the 1960s and ’70s are intentionally stilted and artificial. Between its dry performances and stage-like set dressing, it almost feels like a play-within-a-film. And then a major twist at the end confirms that everything in the world of The Arbalest is not as it seems; that we’ve been in an alternate history or parallel universe all along.
“I wanted this weird, otherworldly tone so that when the twist happens, it’s a surprise, but you still buy it because you’re already in this strange world,” the Atlanta-based Pinney says. “Making other stuff in the world feel a little off helps support it, so that’s why there’s this fake board game and this cube that’s Rubik’s Cube but isn’t. The twist was an early idea. I wanted that to be the culmination of the lead character’s emotion and rage.”
When that moment comes, and you realize what Pinney audaciously pulls off, the rest of The Arbalest starts to make more sense. And the nature of that twist, and how it impacts the story, reveals a lot about not just Pinney’s lead character but also how Pinney himself feels about a significant real-life issue. Forest Kalt, The Arbalest’s deplorable lead, can be seen as an avatar for a certain type of cultural mindset in America today, one for which Pinney clearly has little sympathy.
“The film really is about an adolescent way to look at a relationship, or obsession,” Pinney says. “I thought back to when I was a teenager who really liked a girl who didn’t like me and you kind of obsess over that. You kind of become a stalker in a way. You look at this person as not a human, but as something you desire. It’s a really gross thing for an adult to be doing. The movie is a lot about stunted adolescence, and people who don’t really grow up and kind of fixate on certain things. That’s why games are part of it, and toys. It’s part of being a man-child in a way. I wanted to criticize it, have you watch a character who’s probably not likable, and it all stems from a very adolescent feeling of desire and want and obsession. I wanted to emphasize it as much as possible and just make this character despicable.”
That’s not to say Pinney dislikes games or toys. He quickly points out that he likes video games and plays board games like Catan or Race for the Galaxy when he has the time. And although he says The Arbalest isn’t specifically addressing something like Gamergate, it’s easy to see its troubled central figure taking his sexual anger and frustration to Reddit or Twitter if he existed the real world of today. Kalt is desperate for control, both of the woman he’s obsessed with and how others within his world see him. Pinney realized, almost after the fact, that the desire for control unites The Arbalest and the toys and games that it focuses on.
“When you’re playing a game you’re trying to win,” Pinney says. “You’re trying to control these pieces, playing the worldmaker, the god, controlling this thing. I think that transfers to this character where he’s trying to have control over a situation where he doesn’t. He’s trying to control this person and make her do the things he wants and that’s just not how life works.”
The Arbalest Tues., April 5, 9:15 p.m. Plaza Theatre, 1049 Ponce de Leon Ave. atlantafilmfestival.com.