Max Hattler

Spin is synchronised swimming for toy soldiers. Aficionados of plastic infantrymen will recognise them almost instantly, and while they’ve here been rendered such that they can move their limbs, some positional changes see them swapped for another. Here, they are green and black, the living-room invading menace of the tan toy soldiers perhaps being left for a sequel. The sometimes jaunty music from Eclectic works well with Max Hattler’s visuals, all creating an entertaining spectacle. It’s dark in places, intentionally so, and that’s also to the credit of those involved. Perhaps the only note is that among the various GIs and Wehrmacht are some soldiers that appear in fact to be a police SWAT team – what one suspects is actually a battering ram is treated as if it were a giant Roman candle. That may be an artifact of childhood imagination, however, and given how many bricks substituted for firearms before Lego, if you will, bit the bullet, it’s totally forgiveable. Watching Spin does in some ways recall the pageantry of fascism, the Nuhremberg rallies and North Korean stadium displays, though again that’s an important element – divorced of ideology such efforts still glorify something, and the very notion of a toy soldier raises all sorts of questions. Spin doesn’t attempt to answer any of them, nor should it – sometimes the mere act of asking questions is enough, and Spin manages that amply.