Films with wolves in them (ambiguity...)

Peter and the Wolf

UK, 2006

Music by Sergei Prokoviev

Directed by Suzie Templeton

This is an amazing demonstration of perspective, especially when set against the way more familiar Disney version.  When you view the familiar from a different angle, it's suddenly not so familiar anymore.  In fact, the incontrovertible can suddenly become unrecognizable, or inconceivable.  When comparing the two films, Disney and Sterling Holloway emerge as being ideologically overdetermined.  Important questions arise.  Who says that the wolf, in his habitat, following the directives of instinct, is the bad guy?  Why must everything always end in conquest?  Sentimental beasts and apple-cheeked boys will win you your point, but that doesn’t mean you’ve won it fairly.  (The Disney is not only ideological, but also archetypal as well; there’s room for liking and critiquing both.)  Given the pretty convincing contemporary Russian milieu here (executed by a bunch of Poles and Brits), who’s to say that this sleeping, grudgingly affectionate, probably alcoholic Grandfather is all that much better than the Darwinian clarity and nobility of the wild?  In support of this idea, note the feral beauty of the child.

The pre-wolf interlude that goes on outside grandpa’s compound is really light and funny.  That’s a neat trick, since the (hilarious) cat is trying to kill his evolutionary subordinates this whole time.  The advent of the wolf is electrifying.  The design of these creatures!  No second chance for Sonja, this time.  The comic invention and technical execution of what follows is quite awesome.  Look at those fore/mid/backgrounds!  The battle on and around the ice (Eisenstein, 1938?) is really distended, with the result that the child really earns his laurels, while the wolf maintains our admiration.  As for the shocking conclusion, it’s like Nora Helmer slamming that door, or Huck Finn embracing damnation.  Not only the writing on the wall, but the wall come tumbling down.  

The familiar tale, narrated by a different familiar voice: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IB66bInIXAY

The film you may not know: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n7jkJU9p0N0 

Fantastic Mr. Fox

US, 2009

Written by Wes Anderson and Noah Baumbach

Directed by Wes Anderson

Wait—is this even a kids’ movie?  Kids' lit maven Charlotte Huck’s requirement (to be for kids, a book must have a child protagonist) isn’t universal, and Dahl might have been one of the writers that most pushed that envelope.  (But not as often as it might seem.  Charlie, not Willie W., was the  protagonist of that book.)  But Huck’s point still deserves consideration and partial/frequent implementation.  The point is, what is the child’s entrée here?  Ash, say my boys, but I think that they’re being too flexible.  One senses a second motivation behind the adaptation of this property.  

Is that little, resonant wolf thing that happens near the end a key to the whole exercise?  Something about Rossellini on Chaplin, Godard on Lewis, maybe Anderson on himself?  Say what you will about mannerism, lack of discipline or decorum and such, but I’m a free man.  If that’s what Anderson is up to, it’s pretty self-regarding.  Given the evidence the film provides, it’s also true.  The increasingly mannered (though always pretty) geometries of the live action films work perfectly here.   

Critics talk about the Dahl contribution, naturally.  I see a lot of William Péne du Bois too: diagrams and trajectories and such.  What’s unexpected and pleasing is how kinetic and wild the film is, how frequently it more or less runs amok.  That Heroes and Villains sequence!  (In another register, Old Man River!  Anderson's music selection can seem mannered too, until it starts glowing.)  Numerous eating and digging sequences make the same impression.  Otherwise, lots of pleasing drollery, some fine voice turns, some good Andersonian family melancholy, and some pretty dire and bracing violent conflict.