Undone an Amazon Prime serie waiting to be discovered

Undone is an animated serie visible on the platform Amazon Prime. Created by Raphael Bob-Waksberg and Kate Purdy, while the direction is by Hisko Hulsing. The peculiarity of this serie is the technical used, infact is completely realized with the technology of the rotoscope.

The main actors are Rosa Salazar, playing Alma, the american actress that we saw in Bird Box, Alita and in tv series like Parenthood and American Horror Story. While in the shoes of the girl’s father there is a controversial Bob Odenkirk, which became famous for the serie Breaking Bad and afterward for Better Call Saul.

The technical of the rotoscope

This technical is used to realized a cartoon where the figures are very realistics. Infact the drawer retraces the scenes realized with the video filming. This technical exists for many years, at the beginning it was realized by projecting the video on a glass and retracing the image on a paper, now it’s fully realized with the computer. With this technical they realized even other movies and series like Walking Life and A scanner Darkly.

The actors played inside rooms almost empty, which were then animated by adding environments and backgrounds. With this technical they can keep the expressions and the emotions of the face and the actions of the actors, by easily creating though surreal and fantastic environments thanks to the animation.

What’s Undone about

From the same creators of BoJack Horseman, Undone is a story that tells about the mourning and the mental health. The story tells about Alma, right after a car accident. The girl infact until the day before was stucked in a frustating and boring routine. She was forced by an oppressive and demanding mother, she has instead a sister too much happy and optimistic, even the relationship with the boyfriend is particual because she isn’t too much conviced to stay with him. Alma has a roaring behaviour, she has a sharp sarcasm and she is pervaded by a cynical discontent about what she has.

She lives waiting for something to change, terrified by the idea to get sick like the granny which became schizophrenic, she’s constantly looking for some signs that tell her mind is getting worst. The feeling of frustation and loneliness that pervades her is emphatized by the moments when Alma took out the hearing aid, and we entered in an annoying silence too.

This situation stops right after the accident, where she sees her father Jacob, which died twenty years before in an accident too. Jacob will bring Alma to the limits of the space and the time. Between reality and imagination, by reviving in Alma the fear to be victim of the mental illness too.

The father moves like a kind of guide in this dream world. The girl will so learn to travel in the time and especially she will try to come back to the day of the death of the father. This because she wants to solve the mystery about how the accident happened, trying to avoid it to save the father and to let him partecipate to the wedding of her sister.

The genre

Undone is a story hardly recognizable in a specific category of genre: between the drama and the commedy, it is even a little bit a crime due to the mystery to solve (both about the death of the father, and about the Alma’s happiness). Everything then is pervaded by a kind of mysticism and magic, between ancient rituals and new beliefs.

The exercise of style made by the authors was mostly the one to join together many elements, inspirations and events in only eight episode of half hour each.

This post is also available in: Italiano