23 November, 2012

Folly, last: crazy kids' films


Fantasia 
US, 1940
By Walt Disney, et al.

I really like this movie.  It’s all over the place, but bravely so.  I know they used to read those audience response cards like crazy, but for all that Fantasia feels like a gamble, and a statement of conviction and affection.  The opening, where the orchestra comes into this carefully and crazily lit space, is a nice, doubtless unconscious entry in the cinema direct category.  It’s utterly contrived documentation, but it's also a contrivance with real documentary value.  They are, after all, musicians.  It’s like Carlos Saura's dance films—shoot real stuff, as beautifully as you can.  Great idea.  That’s not Deems Taylor’s voice anymore, is it?  Looped or not, he’s an hilariously square, dull presence, and will continue to be such for the duration.  Stokowski is ridiculous.  Stokowski is fabulous.  That silhouette! 




The Bach piece is cool.  Oskar Fischinger might well have gotten upset, and it’s hard to explain that thing that looks like a marching green pepper of death.  But there is too abstraction here, or maybe an effective Mickey Mousing (musically speaking) that dispenses with actual objects.  As fine art it might just be kind of gauche, but in the field of animation it is an undeniable advance.  The Tchaikovsky stuff is exquisite, and it demonstrates another really valuable kind of abstraction.  These are recognizable objects, and they’re even given personalities.  But they’re not really given narratives, or motivations.  It's just colour and movement and space—terrific.


The Sorceror bit is pretty familiar by now.  Still, look at that animation!  Also really exquisite.  And Mickey Mouse is an ax-murderer!  The source poem is by Goethe, of course, and this really is a kid-sized version of Faust.  One of the stated motivations behind this movie was that it was going to Educate Audiences about Classical Music.  This episode makes a quieter, maybe more effective contribution to that literacy effort.  "The Sorceror's Apprentice" is an exemplary entry in the vaunting ambition/mad scientist category of myths that we should all learn and know.  It’s lovely how they accomplish that, then pull it back for a piquant, have-it-both-ways didactic ending.  A spanking, and an affectionate gleam in the eye.  

The Stravinsky sequence is really cool.  Instruct and delight!


(Not the Stravinksy sequence...)

Next comes that soundtrack bit.  Awful!  These classicals don’t do jazz very convincingly.  The Beethoven is also awful, partly because all of their female mythical creatures resemble the Black Dahlia.  (You might not want to look that one up.)  That thunderstorm is great, though, and Hespera’s passage through the twilit sky is utterly exquisite.  The marriage of picture and music at this moment is just perfect.  In fact, for all I just said, the Beethoven sequence is also beautifulthe 6th!and remains pretty well untouched by all the tackiness surrounding it.  

If that first mythical episode is a mixed bag, then the next also-mythical part is about as unmitigated as you can get.  I vote: "The Dance of the Hours" must be Disney’s greatest moment.  In fact, it's up there with the whole medium's greatest, most joyful accomplishments.  And how heartening it is for kids, or any other sadness-prone soul.  These awkward, umprepossessing dancing creatures don’t know that they’re awkward or unprepossessing.  The result is that they’re not.  In fact, that head hippo is stunning!  We love you, kids...  

Additionally, this is an hilarious send-up of balletic excess and self-regard, except that eventually send-up morphs into sincere admiration, even devotion.  The self-regard is justified; the ballerinas deserve, carry any air they may put on.  The felicities in this sequence are nearly endless, but can you beat that hippopotamal prima ballerina's last great, cataclysmically, apocalyptically graceful dive?  (Do I protest too much?  I'm trying to find words that are as big and high and wide as what actually happens.)  The alligator loves her!  And how right he is!  The subsequent escalation/climax/destruction is perfect.  (Tristan und Isolde?  After Union, it's on to the götterdämmerung [excuse the mixed Wagnerian metaphor!].) This is as good as movies can possibly be.


The Disney lawyer who comes after you if you fair-use images for innocuous blogging purposes...

"Night on Bald Mountain" probably should have been tacky too.  It’s pretty great.  All stops pulled with those infernal characters, who really register.  The Schubert is kind of po-faced, or, if you prefer, it’s kind of sweet and moving. In fact, I so prefer. Actually, I really love this movie.  



Babe, Pig in the City
US, 1998
Directed by George Miller

Yet more evidence that box-office returns and actual merit have no necessary correspondence, this franchise-killing mega-flop may be the definitive children’s movie.  This means first of all that it is tremendously fun, one of the most prodigiously, even profligately imaginative films ever made.  Ideas, asides, jokes and stylistic flourishes are in practically inexhaustible supply—you need multiple exposures to uncover all the aural, visual and conceptual treasures on offer here. Just as importantly, and even more basically, Miller and associates are exploring a great many of the major themes and questions of children’s literature, and doing so with wonderful clarity and feeling.  


Critics are wrong, sometimes

This very depth was the source of much negative press at the time of the film’s release—too scary, they said.  Too much!  You could make that argument; the vulnerability of innocence in a corrupt and weary world is not glossed over here, and the results are not necessarily reassuring.  But you find this kind of thing in many of the marginal-in-decorum, absolutely core folk tales that started out for and by adults, then somehow—Andrew Lang?—got co-opted by kid culture.  (Try the Grimms' "Mother Trudy", or "The Two Travelers", or "Misfortune", or even, more lightheartedly, "The Clever People".)  Unsuitable for children, unless they are, or you make them so.  Like those difficult tales, George Miller’s film demonstrates how constructive this kind of exploration can be.  If we’ll have it, the vivid portrayal of darkness serves to strengthen affirmations of virtue and hope. In such contexts the victory of these latter qualities actually means something.  


Vanity Fair (cf. Bunyan, 1678)

Not incidentally, it is in this affirmation that Babe, Pig in the City particularly distinguishes itself.  Not content with simply defeating dark forces, Miller, through his wondrous child (pig)-like protagonist, sets out to understand and transform them.  With one amusing exception (Hortense!), this film will have no villains. This is most particularly demonstrated in the amazing sequence featuring Babe, a Doberman pinscher, a pit-bull and a lawn mower.  (See what I mean?!)  Here, and in the margins throughout the film, injustice, cruelty and horror are close and real and ultimately susceptible to the ministrations of kindness and mercy.  The resonances are considerable—I am put in mind of stories as varied and as substantial as John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress and Albert Camus’ The Plague, not to mention even more basic sacred texts from a number of cultures.  This film works like the best kind of fable or parable or multi-leveled narrative: after the fun and the laughs and the thrills, after the story for its own sake, there is so much of value to discuss and enact!  Whether it is presently acknowledged or not, this is one of the superlative milestones of children’s media.

P.S. Watched it again.  It still plays as profligately imaginative, possessing the technical and craft wherewithal to pull off every ridiculous folly.  I notice that these animals are actually performing, or at least that they’ve been typage-juxtaposed in such as way to as suggest as much.  Also, in the midst of all these fireworks, every tender expression is underplayed.  More please, Mr. Miller!


Pinocchio 
Italy, 2002
Directed by Roberto Begini.

There’s a real tension between all of the deluxe, glimmering production design and the rougher, more improvised commedia components.  It’s a productive tension too, maybe suggesting the prestige of the property, in service of the property’s gloriously digressive, transgressive nature.  There are any number of fortuitous, imaginative things here, in design, concept and enactment, etc.  Begnini has been an attention hog in past films, but though sometimes he’ll stage a scene to reflect his main character’s narcissism, in the end this is completely and triumphantly an ensemble piece.  (I love the way Pinocchio lies.  I also submit that Benigni has now given us the best lollipop licking in film history.  [Intended or not, this is Freud's polymorphous perversity, and it's very sweetly rendered too.])  Each small part is wonderfully acted.  Each episode has a Stan Laurel-like now-ness, but each also contributes to an impressively culminative whole.

This Pinocchio is funny, but what it really gets is the paradoxes of childhood, of how the brat and angel so frustratingly and exaltingly intermingle.  We all like Disney’s Sunday School version, but like Collodi's sloppy, sublime original, this one really gets repentance down, in all its agony and sweetness.  The same goes for its take on family life, and friendship, and most all of what goes on in this lone and dreary world.  The ending is sweet, satisfying, and almost unbearably poignant.  It’s in the source, triumphantly served in this adaptation, and not at all out of place on that similar shelf containing Don Quijote, The Wind in the Willows, The House at Pooh Corner, or your own child packing up and driving away.  The carriage.  His wife.  The hat!

Warning: don't use the English soundtrack!  This film only works in Italian.


Pardon!

Last week Mum's grade three P.E. students stepped off of the strait and narrow path.  As part of the repentance process, their home room teacher made them write notes of apology.

(Spellings retained, with due respect and affection.)

Sweetness:

Joan Miró, Blue II, 1961
Der p.e. teacher or Mrs. Duncan. I'm sorry for being rude and talking when the teacher's talking. I'll be nice and be quite.  From Austin.

I'm sorry I was bad for P.E.  I will NOT do it agen.  From Cole.

I'm sory for not lissing.  I was not doing the rite thing. From Conner.

I am sorry we were mean and bad.  I hope you will for give us.  From Abby.

I'm so sorry that we were being bad last time I am glad that we can stil go I am so sorry I think that I was being the worst.


Protesting too much:

I'm so so so so so so so sorry.

I'm sorry for acting mean.  Next time I will do better.  Thanks for leting us come to PE.  Next time I will try to act better.  And do better  at following the rules.  Next time I will act better and following the rules.  I'm sorry for acting that way.  I'm sorry Mrs. Duncan next time I will follow your rules better and act better I'm really sorry sinserly ___


Miró, Hand Catching a Bird, 1968

Strategizers:

We are not sorry.  Because a sorry person dos'nt say sorry and do's it again and again. We truly apoligize!

Dear Mrs. Duncan.  I like what we do at P.E.  It is sow fun.  What are we going to do today?


Touché:

I was not here but I'm sorry that evey one elss was bad.  

I am so so sorry for being loud.  It was our first snow of the year.

Eathan, Carter, or Brady are trouble makers.  Me sometimes.

I am sorry for being loud and talking to my friends when you are talking and yelling.  From Ethan.


Miró, by Alexander Calder, 1930