Animism As A Narrative Device, But Inverted For Movie Plot

Amid this essay about a cinematic trend of animals as metaphor, it's not just cute animals acting like humans.

“Rango,” so thoroughly saturated in references to well-known, non-beast-centered stories, practices a kind of reverse animism. Animism is a set of beliefs emphasizing the power of local spirits: creatures, plants, rock formations and other objects of nature. In “Rango,” though, the “spirit of the West” turns out to reside not in a mesa, a cactus or a coyote but rather in a person, a ghostly cowboy rendered by computers (and the voice of Timothy Olyphant) into the spectral likeness of Clint Eastwood.

SOURCE: By A.O. Scott in the NY Times