Capitan Groog and Other Strange Creatures

A weather-beaten mariner, Captain Grogg—equal parts barnacle and bravado—stumbles from fog into myth when he sights, off a craggy littoral, a thundering herd of centaurs: torsos burnished like ancient bronze, hooves drumming tidal basalt, manes tossing briny spume. What begins as a tally-ho chase turns into a hallucinatory odyssey: Grogg’s schooner morphs into a floating menagerie, his crew sprouting feathers, antlers, glassy stares; the centaurs, once quarry, become his fractured mirror, forcing him to confront the beast he has always carried beneath his own sternum. Victor Bergdahl’s lantern-jawed Grogg oscillates between slapstick panic and Lear-like desolation, while the film itself—part maritime yarn, part expressionist fever dream—paints the sea as a liquid unconscious where every creature is a repressed wish galloping home. The final tableau, equal parts carnival and crucifixion, leaves the horizon cracked open like a mussel shell, pearls of wonder and dread glimmering inside.