Pat Oliphant believed that a cartoonist – especially one whose pencils often numb the pain of repression under the guise of satirical edge – has only one job: articulating people’s hatred into singular pieces of mockery. Bill Banowsky’s “A Savage Art,” which chronicles the life and work of the Australian-American artist mght not have the depth or insight into what the political cartoonist’s drive was or what relevance his work had on the contemporary American landscape, it sure knows how to relgate the point that the threat to free speech can only be navigated with the relentless and fearless pursuit for what’s right.
Banowsky’s documentary has an artistic, almost gleeful vision of who Pat Oliphant was and what his life and work eventually meant to people and those around him. He uses an old-school style of TV-documentary narration to tell Oliphant’s tale – first as a young boy homeschooled in Australia, and then as an immigrant interested in US politics, and, more importantly, the politicians who run it. Oliphant’s entire oeuvre of cartoon work centered on his scathing criticism of how the most powerful men in America ran the country.
He was not just semi-critical of their work – wherein he did not leave even the most revered presidents of the United States, like Obama, alone, to present an outright anti-establishment stance meant to hold those in charge accountable. The documentary uses Oliphant’s scarcely publicized or interviewed life by mixing footage with the present time talking-heads format of inquiring his family, building it around chapters of his life designed with the savagery of “Punk The Penguin,” a character that he used in all his works to often represent his personal takes on what statements or investigations his pieces would make.
The documentary takes a look at important check points in Pat Oliphant’s life – even delving into his more artistic side – Vis-à-vis him being a sculptor and painter before eventually moving you into the final chapter of an artist’s life – one that is full of despair because creation is all that he knows. As a documentation of Oliphant’s life, “A Savage Art” works as it is able to convey the artist’s need to “steer up the beast.” Although it fails to have a deeper, more intricate political context of its own. It also doesn’t help that the film does not consider Cartoons as art. From a biased point of view, that is something I do not attest to, and even though the film doesn’t necessarily say that as a statement, a film about taking a stand should be more sincere in saying what it’s saying.
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