Film Post: some kids' films

Enchanted

Kevin Lima, US, 2007

What a sweet movie this is.  Yes, the institution of the princess has a lot to answer for, and it’s gotten decidedly and dangerously out of hand.  And yes, Disney, even as it packages and markets this very movie, is at least half of the problem.  But if we move beyond franchising and ideological entrapment—a considerable move, but possible—we’ll also find cultural and literary tradition, cultural and literary substance.  In the Princess there’s sociological complexity (youth and age, wealth and work, etc.), as well as simple, optimistic impulses that deserve to be honoured and even defended.   

Andersen, The Swineherd

The film successfully has it both ways, and does both things.  It’s very knowing and successfully satirical.  It has fun with its 2-D characters and their world.  It lampoons the preposterousness of the 2-D world, scoring some real zingers when its conventions hit reality.  Reality, as represented by the Patrick Dempsey family, is a difficult place, but a reasonable one as well.  A kind of happiness is available there.  But is that all there is?  Think of Nightmare Before Christmas—the status quo is decent and acceptable.  But it’s still fallen.  We need redemption!  

Lewis Hine, Trapper Boy, 1908

Enter happily-ever-after to save the day.  It does so, but honourably: it evolves from childlike simplicity and childish oversimplification (you can’t separate ‘em), to the challenges and satisfactions of aesthetic self-awareness and adulthood.  The aesthetic self-awareness is in the modernist/not post-modernist musical numbers.  So much better than Get Over It, or Baz Luhrmann even!  These go beyond princess critique to commenting on the delicate loveliness of the musical genre, and of film fantasy generally.  Dumb, except for all of those resonances.  The adulthood is in the woman who becomes wiser and the man who becomes gentler.  (It’s Knocked Up!)  Giselle is a Disney princess, but with more than a sprinkling of Huck Finn, of Darryl Hannah in Splash! and even Bruno Ganz in Wings of Desire.  Felix culpa ("O happy fault that merited such and so great a Redeemer"): she learns that there’s no salvation without crossing through the valley of the shadow.  “That’s How You Know” appears to be self-referential and tongue-in-cheek.  But when the number ends, they and we cheer for a reason.  Musical cadences seem impossible too, but they are acoustically true, and so satisfying.  Terrific.  I also admire how generous they are to their secondary characters, to the Ralph Bellamy figures who aren’t romantically right.  This is a real advance from the standard and often very recent (Gaston, Scar) melodramatic conventions on which we tend to rely.   

We are let down somewhat by the noisy ending, Disney heritage quotes notwithstanding.

Annie

John Huston, US, 1982

I think the general wisdom on this film is that it's not only a flop, but a failure.  Once again, it appears that we shouldn't always believe what they tell us.  Yes there’s a bit of awkward here and there.  Kids are tough to wrangle, after all, and there are a ton of them.  Also, the Curry/Peters sub-plot isn’t particularly interesting, and the peril at the end is pretty perfunctory.  But what's wrong with a bit of mis-calculation?  This is still a great movie!  Specifics:  

The musical numbers are energetically staged (which makes the contrastingly sparse inauguration of “Tomorrow” quite moving).  Innocence encountering wealth has a bit or Richie Rich appeal, and those first we’re-in-the-money scenes (Ms. Reinking helps a great deal) are charming.   

Ginger Rogers, Gold Diggers of 1933

But the film quickly opts for something more substantial.  Arabian Nights, yes, but also an important question: who needs all this?  Annie’s willingness to go back when Warbucks discovers she’s not a boy is not only Shirley Temple sweet, but HC Andersen angry.  That’s why the next plot point makes such good sense; the transition from billionaire to “daddy” is moving, convincing, and morally necessary.   

There are two components to this.  First: it’s Silas Marner! Terrific on the child purifying the adult.  

Second, Scrooge/Oliver Twist, but even better.  Do I recall complaints and incomprehensions about the New Deal stuff when the film came out?  Fair; what exactly does that prove in 1982?  But it’s sure clear why this registered so in the 30’s, and it sure registers today.  In fact, it looks pretty righteous and timeless.  (It doesn't just relate to recessions and health care, but to that thin but so-piercing sliver or radicalized, omni-obstructionist conservatism.)   

Punjab and the Asp represent an impossible conflict between authenticity and good taste.  Why is Punjab played by a black man?  Oh—Carol Burnett is a treasure.

 

Where the Wild Things Are 

Spike Jonze, US, 2009

The first impressive thing is the photography, which shifts and probes, frequently utilizes a narrow depth of field, establishes a dialogue between characters and objects in the story, and lines and surfaces within the frame.  If we wanted to stretch we could see a correlation between that strategy and Max’s unsettled family situation, or Max’s unsettled, unsettling passage from one stage to another, life.  

There’s some wisdom in the prologue, a sense of family dynamic and a child’s place within it.  The snow fort episode really sums up these qualities.  Photographically, it glistens.  Dramatically it’s exemplary; they don’t push and make it too serious, with the result that we can feel an unforced seriousness to it.  Pain!  The protagonist is very beautiful.

Max's teacher makes a speech about the meaninglessness of the universe.  It's nail-on-the-head gratuitous to the point of being funny.  In a film that takes very few missteps as it pursues kid truth, this sticks out like a sore something. 

Other than that, there's a lot of substance beneath these photographic surfaces.  Freud or Jung?  Nicely, it’s probably both, with a bit of Piaget thrown in.  The details of the figurative, wild-thing space are superb, as are the creatures, their articulation, the exploration and presentation of it all.  It has been suggested that this film meanders overly.  The charges are correct, as is the decision to meander.  In that respect the film is actually pretty profound.  This is the sharp and tender way in which it replicates the patterns of childish play.  Starting with elation, even excess, careening off with hopeful anticipation, eventually or even immediately being waylaid by confusion or discouragement, pique or even the fact that no one thought how the play narrative was going to end. 

Tati, Mon Oncle, 1958

There’s also a profundity in how they establish and develop these Wild Things.  This is, after all, a projection, or a set of projections.  A little unpacking, a little dream work reveals not only that this is how Max’s associates are, but how we all are.  (In this they are very well served by excellent voice performances, and of course by the creature manipulation.)  Wonderful things and worrisome flaws intermingled.  We bear with one another.   

The departure from the imaginary or psychoanalytic space, and the return to and reunion with the real, are very touching.

How to Train Your Dragon

Dean Deblois, Chris Sanders, US, 2010

Why are these Vikings speaking with Scots accents?  There’s some healthy gender discourse lurking around here, slightly or indirectly relating to sexuality, but having more to do with allowing for a greater range of male/female being.  This is effectively explored because the filmmakers ultimately have a lot of sympathy for their gender-normative/gender-extreme characters, for their knuckleheaded boys and catty girls.  That’s another healthy thing about the film.  There’s plenty of knockabout, and some caricature to fuel it.  But in the end it’s inhabited by a gentle spirit.  In this it looks back, whether they’re thinking of the sources or not.  There’s a bit of Anne Shirley, a bit of Huck Finn (again), a bit of Budd Boetticher, all in the following, respective ways: the good child raises the entire community up, perceptions and people get more complex as the more you learn about them, or the more the narrative progresses.  Also, everyone has his reasons.  

Comanche Station, 1960

Renoir...

The gentleness is remarkable, since this is also very clearly, and very effectively, a war film, as well as being a parable for the political generally.  Here are the Afghan and Iraq wars, as well, in a more timeless, mytho-archetypal way, Crusades generally.  As we consider that mythological material, we also get a glimpse at some hard contemporary truths.  When you always antagonize the other, the other can’t help but be transformed by your antagonism.  For instance, brutalization, brutality.  Starting with our protagonist's rapprochement (cf. The Black Stallion) with this fantastic Night Fury dragon, the kids see how this might be addressed, even reversed.   

The peacemaking started with the Viking kids themselves; soon everyone—except maybe the parents—is seeing unsuspected possibilities in the other.  (Also, there’s real subtlety to this little romance.  Strange to say, but it’s kind of like Ordinary People!) 

The film is gentle, but not mushy, or soft-headed.  The superb climax brings us face to face with the implacable foe (let’s say, for instance, the jihadist components of militant Islam), who can’t be reasoned with, nor appeased or ignored.  They’ve given us slapstick, and inspiring Sunday School sermons, but now its time for melodrama, and the violent resolution of story and character conflicts.  The thing is, they’ve earned it; this is not the noisy, wearisome kid film run of the mill, where you get roller coasters instead of proper resolution.  In other words, there’s myth in this melodrama.  St. George and the Dragon!  By rights this kid should have died, and his mount too.  Of course you can’t do that with a kids’ movie.  To their credit they maim him, and by so doing generate a bit of bonus didacticism.  Physical infirmities come from somewhere; never judge because of handicap.  Altogether, this movie is a very felicitous combination of things.    

Howl’s Moving Castle

Hiyao Miyazaki, Japan, 2004

I’m never quite sure what is actually happening in this movie.  But if the story eludes, the feeling of the thing is eloquently clear.  It has archetypal, mythological weight; through the course, at the end, you have that sense of an ineffable something.  This is majesty, grandeur, even and finally, truth.  The character of Sophie, so simple and so monumental, gives the lie to the old saw about goodness being uninteresting, or unportrayable.  She is virtue and decency, and she is utterly dramatic and compelling.  That old/young idea!  The castle itself, and all of its expressionistic significance!  (It is what he is.  Maybe the story is clear after all.)  

What amazing characters.  Howl is profoundly mercurial, or maybe youthful.  So attractive, so much possibility, so discourteous all the time.  The witch of the waste—that spell-casting is really scary!—turns so tenderly into the failing, soft-eyed Grandma.  Both components are true, neither is complete.  Just like us.  Of whom do we completely approve?  Whom can we completely condemn?  The Disney-esque secondaries are so much more than Disney ever makes of them.  Calcifer is funny, but his history!  Turnip is a bit scary, then quite comical, and then he moves so smoothly into an embodiment of humble, elegant gallantry.  It’s all very moving.  Sometimes it’s for the plot or character things.  Just as often it’s for the grace notes, or their absolute visual mastery.  The camera movements!  The compositions and colours, the way that big tree gives way to that aircraft.  Goodness isn’t enough.  Craft isn’t enough.  But great character and absolute artistry combined?  You can only be humble and grateful.