From the legendary Emerald Tablet of Herm From the revelation of fire to mediaeval quests for the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, the alchemical path has attracted many great minds. Packed with recipes for herbal elixirs, soothing balms, heady scents, rich pigments, and potent solvents, The Alchemist’s Kitchen will appeal to anyone fascinated by the past and the occult world. The Alchemist Cookbook Premiered on March 13th at the SXSW Film Festival.From the revelation of fire to mediaeval quests for the legendary Philosopher’s Stone, the alchemical path has attracted many great minds. You’ll love or hate The Alchemist Cookbook for being exactly what it wants to be, but you’d be hard-pressed to find an inconsistency in its design, to be that thing. And although it may make reference to The Long Goodbye, or The 400 Blows, it feels nothing like those films, nor much like anything else you’ve ever seen before. You understand Cortez’s frustration with Sean’s erratic behavior as a sign that he cares, and a test of manhood by digestion of dry cat food signals a playful friendship that should be evocative to all.Ī rapturous rip-roaring soundscape made up of hard-hitting hip-hop, crunching Doritos, and clanging, popping, metals and glass give Cookbook its final sheen of attitude and bad boy personality. Ty Hickson (Sean) and Amari Cheatom (Cortez) accomplish the difficult task of providing the film a central warmth and tragedy without didactic dialogue to point towards it. All aesthetic decisions supplement, not detract, from the heart buried deep at the core. Light and image appear natural even as events graduate in oddity and horror. Shot on what looks like entirely normal lenses, the look remains symmetrical but grounded. And yet through all of the figurative wars and allegory, The Alchemist Cookbookremains a human story. It is all in service of the hysteria of Sean’s story, and the arcane nature of alchemy that dominates nearly every scene. But Cookbook is never esoteric for the sake of being it. A scene like Sean panning a flame from one side of his face to the other as his own shadow haunts him will take the place of easy exposition, or dialogue, or a flashback that’d cost the film its mystique.
The Alchemist Cookbook tells its story in visual beats and rhythm’s that almost all channel some element of Sean’s inner conflict with victimhood. But as Sean devolves further into a state of crisis, those operations recede, and the demon encroaches. Cortez provides food, medicine, and the alchemical gizmos required for Sean’s experiments.
And Cortez, ours and Sean’s singular peephole into the outside world, becomes a less tolerable visitor in spite of the goods he delivers. He saws into battery terminals, salvages animal carcasses, and imbibes vial upon vial of chemical hell in an attempt to meet his destiny.īut, rather quickly, a demon, or Sean’s manic decay, begins to impede on his dream. And yet, for Sean, you still hope and believe in the path to riches and immortality. The alchemy features a poor man's chemistry, more boy beating worm guts and dirt into a sludge, than chemist turning lead into gold. Like all recluses, Sean trades the world he was given and can’t relate to for one he can create and control. This hypnotic parable befalls a hermit in the woods a boyish man named Sean (Ty Hickson) who chugs perilous poisons (processed food and drink and gnarly concoctions) until the venom strains through him. An 'out of body' hallucination triggered by a near-death experience - triggered by toxins. The ensuing spell subsists off of a sick, unsettling hypnosis.
The Alchemist Cookbook feels something like the fix you'd get from siphoning arsenic fumes in a weather sealed garage.