Hi. I’m glad you’re here, because you deserve to watch Angel Applicant.
It’s nothing less than a non-religious religious experience. Like crying into your grandma’s arms and feeling better. Heck, like confronting all of life with gentleness and curiosity and hope.
But I’m waxing philosophic about it way more than Ken would—and this is Ken’s movie. He’s our subject, narrator, and director, and he’s the one living with a disease that tightens his skin like plastic wrap. Maybe his organs, too. Might be why his speech is so soft.
If this sounds morbid, it’s not. Sure, he’ll tell us what it’s like to be mistaken for a mannequin or be unrecognizable to his niece, but he’ll also tell us about how he came across—serendipitously—an artist from 100 years ago whose work seems to capture the very essence of what Ken has been feeling with his disease, even as his feelings change. The coincidence is almost unbelievable.
Ken went to art school before his corporate job and before getting sick, so he has an eye for things. The way he presents this newfound art to us, the way he looks at it with us and asks questions with us, is every bit as gorgeous as the world-class art itself. The movie is perhaps the most patient, deliberate, meaningful montage you’ll ever see, created by two minds and bodies years and cultures apart.
Angel Applicant is poetry and philosophy, tenderness and wonder.
Ken August Meyer, observing art by Paul Klee. Or, Paul Klee, speaking to the future.