By Mike Gray I haven’t seen Rango, the Johnny Depp animated feature, but Daniel Krawisz has, and he thinks there’s more depth to the film than the usual Hollywood fare: I saw Rango to enjoy the combined hijinks of Johnny Depp and other cartoon animals, and in this I was not disappointed; however, it was not at all the most memorable aspect of the experience. Rango led me to entirely unexpected places. It is not simply a cartoon about a lizard but a journey into the soul, and it depicts the trials of individuation haunted by the constant specter of death. Interleaved with this basic theme are strong libertarian overtones of the relationship of the individual to society and establishing a connection between redemption and the search for wealth. Rango is intensely metaphorical. It is full of allusions to other films and stories. From the start, the stream of allusions takes one into an associative state of mind, a state receptive to symbols. Rango takes place in an Old West–themed world with animal characters, but to me these all feel like a facade — the movie is a dream, and real action takes place in the mind of the unseen
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