This is my hope for the film: I would very much love if this film could reawaken people’s sympathies for the situation of children in the world – children who are hungry, children who are homeless…
That people would be aware of the need of children in the world.
Wallace and Gromit are arguably the two most delightful characters in the history of animation. Between the previous sentence and this one I paused thoughtfully and stared into space and thought of all of the other animated characters I have ever met, and I gave full points to Bugs Bunny and high marks to Little Nemo and a fond nod to Goofy, and returned to the page convinced that, yes, Wallace and Gromit are in a category of their own. To know them is to enter a universe of boundless optimism, in which two creatures who are perfectly suited to each other venture out every morning to make the world into a safer place for the gentle, the good and the funny.
– Roger Ebert in his review of Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
If there was ever a series that was rare in its utter sincerity and sweetness, Nick Park’s Wallace and Gromit is one I couldn’t recommend enough to children and adults alike.
My first encounter with the British stop-motion characters – Wallace the hapless inventor and Gromit the intelligent and silent dog – was back in 2005 when both starred in their first feature length film, Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit. I went to see it with one of my best and closest friends at the local theater that specialized in independent, foreign, and non-wide release films that otherwise blared at other local complexes. Since it was before matinee, we happened to be the one of the older bunches in the theater as Park’s film reeled across the wide screen.
From what I can remember, it was an absolute pleasure seeing Wallace and Gromit go about their usual business as the Were-Rabbit terrorized a town in its rabbit-like mannerisms. Not only was the stop-motion astounding, but the creativity and narrative were off the charts. The Rube Goldberg like contraption that tips Wallace from his bed into his trousers, followed by putting on sleeves, a vest, and buttering his toast – this was nothing other animation studios like Disney, Pixar, or Ghibli had ever imagined or even come close to depicting. This was Nick Park at full throttle with the creative bunch of Aardman Studios, and the entire lapse of remaining minutes was nothing short but a roller coaster of ingenuity, hilarity, and adventure.
My memory of Were-Rabbit is fond not only because of the film itself, but because of the emotions I felt and how utterly enjoyable it was. I remember at one point, when Lady Tottington turned around with two watermelons held to her bosom and asks (a transforming) Wallace, “how to you like melons?” – we both burst out laughing like no other, so much that a kid asked their mom “mommy, why are those two laughing so much?” and she responded “just ignore them, honey.” In short: this pretty much summed up my first experience of Wallace and Gromit, and established Aardman Animations as one of my favorite animation studios to date for many, many reasons.
What makes Wallace and Gromit so unique, so charming, so inventive, and so undeniably sweet? First, I think it’s important to classify the three major animation studios that are well-known in the American domestic and internationally:
Disney has always been about the magic and the fantastical (any Disneyland veteran will instantly confirm this with anyone). Their most well-known and well-received films – which include the obvious Snow White and The Little Mermaid – have mostly been adaptations of classic fairy and folk tales from collections of the Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christen Anderson. The core appeal of these films includes their happily-ever-after conclusions, musical numbers, bubbly side characters, and easily palatable animation aesthetics (good and evil are very distinct entities, and drawn in such a way that the audience can easily identify who to like and who to hate).
Pixar broke away from Disney traditions by simply investing in high-quality, limit-pushing technical mastery and heartwarming, engaging stories. Arguably, their premiere film Toy Story cemented what the studio was all about from the very beginning: breakthrough, technique, direction, wide appeal, and story, story, story. After fifteen years it’s nice to see that the studio – up until this point – has favored originality and constant constructive criticism over conservatively safe creative stagnation. While this may change in the near future (and I surely hope not), I’ve always been fond of Pixar for their aspiration towards quality and the genuine belief in the public’s desire for greater expectations of film, and especially of animation. I just hope Lasseter and the rest of the gang are smart enough to not pull a Michael Eisner or a George Lucas in their future decisions.
Hayao Miyazaki’s and Isao Takahata’s Studio Ghibli is world renown for films like Princess Mononoke, Spirited Away and arguably the most famous, My Neighbor Totoro. What all these films share is their directly non-Western narratives, depictions and aesthetics – almost the polar opposite of what their Disney contemporaries aspired towards. The greatest emphasis is on the details of the environment, and how almost everything – from a falling dragon to how two young girls react upon seeing a forest spirit – is drawn and inspired from how humans and nature can harmoniously coexist (recently, while watching bits from Ponyo, one of my brother’s friends commented, “everyone seems so at peace with what’s happening around them despite the events being completely unnatural. In fact, it’s almost as if they went ‘oh hey look, ancient sea creatures… ok.’”)
With these characteristics in mind, it’s easier to see why Nick Park (and by extension Aardman Studios) is so utterly unique in animation and storytelling.
I’ve recently watched three Wallace and Gromit short films on Netflix – A Close Shave, A Grand Day Out, and most recently A Close Shave – in this order respectively, and now feel confident enough to say this: what is so striking about Park’s animation and directing style is his utter sincerity. There really isn’t anything fantastic or awe-inspiring or jaw-dropping – in fact, the most amazing thing about Wallace and Gromit is how un-amazing and quiet it is as a whole. Sure, you have the Goldberg like inventions, the inexplicable physical feats otherwise impossible in the real world as we know (speeding on a toy train while laying out toy train rails in front of you to make a path? Check!), the uniqueness of each frame and character look that results from careful and painstaking stop-motion clay animation, the dubious “antagonist” that, well, antagonizes with a specific plot point ('ello, Mr. Were-Rabbit) – but beyond all of that hullabulloo and pragmatic nonsense, at the end of the day Wallace and Gromit are just content to have themselves a nice cup of tea with some crackers and Wenslydale cheese.
Wallace and Gromit is so quiet, so modest, and so simply sweet and sincere that no other popular animation studio – Disney, Pixar, Ghibli alike – has ever thought of pursuing. The closest analogy I could draw for those who are familiar with all three studios (not including Aardman) is this: imagine the little scene in Miyazaki’s My Neighbor Totoro where the two girls are fetching water from the stream. For a few seconds, the camera cuts to a part of the flowing water, where a discarded bottle has become lodged between a couple of small rocks. It’s the sort of attention to detail that many animators (for the sake of time) ignore or choose not to do – yet for those few seconds we see such a detail that says so little yet so much at the same time. Another scene (that I’m sure more are familiar with) is in Andrew Stanton’s Wall•E, where Wall•E picks up a ring holder, takes out the diamond ring – only to throw it away and play eagerly with the box it came in (when I was watching it in theaters, a woman behind me exclaimed “ooh!” before the little robot chucked it away). These small instances of extreme attention to minute details that on average, we take for granted everyday, is what Wallace and Gromit is all about. Stop and smell the roses –would probably be the best quote summation of Nick Park and Aardman studios as a whole. Most amazing is Nick Park’s utter humility and seemingly lacking desire to do more in Wallace and Gromit except more Wallace and Gromit: that is, he simply tiptoes away from the traps of repetitive sequels and creative stagnation that Dreamwork’s Shrek franchise ran into after its first sequel. There is a self-awareness that in spite of the series’ British domestic and international success, there is always something else greater outside the little bubble of the charming duo.
Even though it is a precious and nostalgic collection and valuable to the company, in light of other tragedies, today isn’t a big deal.
– Nick Park responding to the resulting destruction of Aardman’s storage warehouse after a fire accidentally broke out in 2005. He is referencing the South Asian earthquake in his response.
One of the most touching moments out of the three short films I’ve seen recently is in A Grand Day Out, where Wallace and Gromit traverse via rocketship to a planet presumably made out of a cheese. The planet’s guardian, a box-like robot, wakes up to protect the natural environment and comes across the duo’s spread out picnic; collecting each item for its inventory, the robot comes across a travel magazine focusing on skiing. It becomes inspired, and desires to follow Wallace and Gromit back home to earth; however, due to a misunderstanding, the duo take off, and the robot is stranded on its planet with a few pieces of the rocket.
In a sad yet sweet moment, the robot takes the pieces, mends them into makeshift skis, and makes due with the little cheese hills – thus accomplishing his little dream of skiing in the snowy alps of earth, albeit slightly modified.
Comparatively, the two other films after Park’s first short film feature – A Close Shave and The Wrong Trousers – don’t quite hit this lightning-in-a-bottle mark of sad-sweetness, a sort of happy ending without the happily-ever-after, if you will. Don’t misinterpret me though: these two other films do wonders in mixing comedy gold and silliness with ace animation and unbelievably creative achievements while balancing a dubious (even menacing) antagonist whose eventual fate is actually quite satisfactory (and ironically humorous, for the matter); and if I recall correctly, this comedy gold mix was also prevalent in Were-Rabbit, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was also present in the short film I’ve yet to see A Matter of Loaf and Death. I look forward to getting my hands on the short-short film compilation Cracking Contraptions and seeing episodes of the upcoming (or currently broadcasting?) series Wallace and Gromit’s World of Inventions (in fact, the premise of World of Inventions instantly got me sold on the series; one of my lifelong goals is to tie in science with art, animation and film, and seems like Nick Park (and even Henry Selick, for the matter) is ahead of me in the game already. Why does it seem like stop-motion animators always seem to be the most unique?)
As a closing to this entire tidbit, I will say this: the little robot skiing its way across hills on the desolate planet of cheese will forever be a memorable little scene in mind and memory of film and animation.
Strangely though, after watching story – I’ve always got a strange craving for cheese. Specifically pub cheese. Coincidence?
…
Additional Links
• Train chase scene in The Wrong Trousers – the audio dubbed for a college student’s project but you can see how inventive the animation and action is.
• Opening of The Wrong Trousers – you can see the Rube Goldberg inspirations all over this.
After an incredibly optimistic writing session with Revolutionary Road, I decided I was in dire need of a mood lifter less I risk falling into a deep, brooding state that even a fluffy cat wouldn’t cure me of (unless it is the cat I am still without, but that is a different matter). So I perused the list of foreign films I’ve been wanting to see (thanks to various recommendations) and lo and behold – Horus: Prince of the Sun, as recommended by Allan Estrella, was exactly what I needed.
Horus is a 1968 anime movie and is the feature film debut of Isao Takahata, director of the classic and haunting Grave of the Fireflies in 1988. The film is about a boy, named Horus, who is entrusted with the Sword of the Sun after pulling it out from the ancient stone giant, Mogue. Before his father dies, Horus learns that he and his father were the last survivors of a sea village devastated by a wicked sorcerer named Grunwald, and thus sets off to avenge his village and stop Grunwald once and for all.
Watching the film was an interesting experience: there are a lot of Studio Ghibli thematics throughout – the enigmatic forces of nature, the strong female characters, the complexity of motivations and emotions – yet there are a lot of distinctly Disney thematics as well – the evil sorcerer, the bubbly side characters, clashing forces of good and evil, and so on. In a sense, Horus really establishes the distinct divide between the legacies of Disney and Ghibli regarding thematics, animation, aesthetics, and writing. The film is widely unknown outside of Japan because it only ran for 10 days in theaters (for business reasons I’ve yet to really understand) and at that point in time, most of popular culture and public awareness was overshadowed by student protests, civil rights movements and anti-war sentiments pervasive during worldwide political and social unrest. Here, I’ll be highlighting some distinct elements reminiscent of classic Western storytelling and classic Eastern storytelling that sets Horus apart from any prior and subsequent production by Disney and Ghibli, and why it’s quite a gem in the history of anime and animation.
Animation wise, Horus is topnotch for its time. There are only a few scenes where there is no animation but simply a panning/tilting of the camera with an audio track (a clear sign of budget issues) but besides that, Takahata directs some of the most awe-inspiring scenes that even some of recent animated features don’t come close to. For one, multiple framing types are used throughout the film:
High-angle shot
Low-angle shot
Establishing/master shot
There are also multiple fields of depth and focal points:
Grunwald is also holding the axe that Horus threw at him. The rope that holds the axe is blurred since Grunwald is the main focus.
Here, there are multiple depths of field, with Horus being the closest and Grumwald being the farthest – all indicated by their size relative to the screen.
These composition traits were severely missing from the Disney (chronicle) colleagues of Horus, The Aristocats in 1970 and Robin Hood in 1973, both which relied heavily on minimal dimensions (the majority of the film was mostly in a linear horizon, with the characters simply moving left and right with respect to the screen) and repetitious animation (there is a set amount of movements each character performs, resulting in a rather limited characterization and performance of the animated heroes and villains). With regards to animation, Horus outdoes The Aristocats and Robin Hood by a long-shot, and is even auteuristic in certain ways:
A technicolor-like effect was used in the Enchanted Forest sequence.
Mogue, the Rock Lord.
Grunwald’s Mammoth of Ice, fighting flames created by the villagers.
The sequence where the artists animated the reflection of sun on ice was visually astounding, notwithstanding Mogue’s epic entry into Grunwald’s lair.
Use of a soft focus on a particular person/object, further emphasizing the focus by blacking out everything surrounding the person/object.
Overlap of animation cels.
Snow-Ice Wolves flying down the mountainside; these reminded me of Haku in Miyazaki’s Spirited Away.
The Ice Mammoth and Mogue battle sequence reminded me a lot of the Forest Spirit from Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke.
I don’t think anyone can ever outdo the animation of Monstro from Disney’s Pinocchio, but the Pike sequence in Horus does an excellent job on a lot of levels; I liked this screenshot the most because of the field depth inferred from the unfocused branch/tree/rocks in the foreground with Horus and the Pike in the background and in focus.
Gorgeous yet frightening sequence where Hilda unleashes mice upon the village in an act of terror.
Hilda’s Owl reminded me of Archimedes from Disney’s The Sword in the Stone - except not funny, less floofy, and white. But back to my main point: evil characters are drawn menacingly, like this here owl (who is the less hilarious version of Archimedes)…
… and good characters are drawn with a charm! (also, they are floofy)
Comparatively, Disney animators used strikingly similar animation in both The Aristocats (right) and Robin Hood (left)
Technical aspects aside, Horus presents some interesting Western and Eastern thematics in its narrative as well. Set in Iron Age Scandinavia, the story is a classic Western fable rich with mystical powers of good and evil that tamper with humans. Foremost, Horus is a very pure and very pious protagonist: no evil thoughts cross his mind, and he’s the perfect archetype for the Western hero; in fact, the first scene revolves around him fighting a pack of vicious wolves, and he is only saved by the rock lord Mogue. Mogue’s first appearance is the classic set-up for such an adventure, the random encounter with a powerful entity who sets forth a goal for the protagonist to strive towards, and warns that there is an evil entity which Horus must be wary of. Additionally, the death of Horus’s father lends further momentum to the story and protagonist’s motivation: the same evil entity Mogue spoke of is who Horus must take his revenge upon. Good and evil are established very early in the film, and while we know Horus will persevere we also know he will encounter numerous barriers that may prevent him from attaining his ultimate goal. Horus includes song and dance like Disney films as well, though I felt that these were less like musical numbers and more like natural characteristics of a small village that has distinct customs and practices; also, singing is a distinct characteristic of Hilda, the main female protagonist, and this characteristic plays a role in how the plot progresses throughout the film, and is less of a classic depiction of femininity. There are also some side characters that are Disney-esque in their animation, but not quite to the extent of candy-covered nudnik that becomes so obnoxiously giddy and uplifting as to induce mental diabetes (I’m looking at you, Cinderella – and don’t think I won’t go and sic my cat that-I-am-still-without on your singing mice if they start messing with my pumpkins).
Trials of character, essential to Western lore, are also present: there’s a scene where Horus confronts a giant Pike terrorizing the fishing village that saved him after his front encounter with Grunwald, and it’s a scene that echoes of classic fairy and folktales of the Brothers Grimm where a hero/heroine must destroy a elemental force in order to restore natural order (i.e. The Twelve Brothers, The Seven Crows, The Glass Coffin, The Nix in the Pond, The Ball of Crystal). Characters of good are drawn in friendly manner while characters of evil are drawn in poor disposition – the good look good, the bad look bad (for instance, Grunwald’s henchmen wolves are drawn menacingly while Horus’s bear, Coro, is drawn amicably); in a sense, the extremities of morale are personified almost literally, just as Jiminy Cricket was animated as Pinocchio’s conscious in Disney’s 1940 film. Then there’s old Grunwald himself, who simply wants to eliminate all humans in his sight because he’s a pleasant fellow like that.
The villagers collectively decide how to deal with Grunwald’s antagonism.
However, there are distinctly Eastern elements to the story as well. Various elements of nature are personified into distinct personalities: Mogue, the rock lord, is booming and almost Ent-like from J.R.R. Tolkien’s universe; Grumwald, the sorcerer, specializes in ice magic and sends out spells of snow-ice wolves; the collective, not the individual, is necessary to accomplish any feat; the environment is distinctly beautiful, dangerous, and omnipresent, trumping over all human attempts of control (in fact, Hayao Miyazaki was responsible for “Scene Design” during production; his painters hand can easily be seen in his famous works, such as Spirited Away in 2002); and most important of all, not all characters are solely evil or good without motivation.
This last characteristic is particularly important and poignant in most of Studio Ghibli’s film to date (I say most because I haven’t seen all of them yet – I’ll get there soon though!) This is a sentiment I agree with very much so: I’m of the opinion that there’s no absolute good or evil without motive, and even then the term “absolute” is difficult for me to fully endorse at face value; instead, I usually try and analyze the narrative or psychological significance of moral extremes. Even then I feel that absolutes are much more common to Western narratives than Eastern narratives: Eastern stories commonly deal with undertones of actions rather than the actions themselves, and thus the stories often lend themselves to more nuanced (“grey”) characters regarding personalities of good and evil. In Horus, there’s a corrupt deputy named Drago who manipulates everyone so he can gain power and dispel of Horus; purportedly a spy for Grunwald, Drago is obviously not a “good guy,” but his motivations for power and prestige are very much human. Even more interesting than Drago is the character Hilda, who marks a very important thematic in Ghibli’s most famous productions – the strong, independent, and nuanced female character.
It took Disney 52 years to progress towards strong female characters, beginning in 1989 with The Little Mermaid after starting with the classic damsel-in-distress princess archetype with Snow White in 1937. Takahata included a strong female from the very start with his directorial debut in 1968 with Horus, a philosophy and tradition that has additionally spearheaded by his contemporary, Hayao Miyazaki, with many subsequent Ghibli films such as Nausicaa and Princess Mononoke. In Horus, this character is none other than the solemn and tormented Hilda: though she is initially under Grumwald’s control, it’s obvious that she’s neither pleased or happy with her choice for immortality; in fact, a good portion of the film focuses on Hilda alone (at one point I wondered if Horus had gone M.I.A. just for the heck of it), and generously fleshes out the internal conflict she feels when she’s ordered to wreak havoc upon and kill the very villagers she’s grown attached to. There might be a bit of the damsel-in-distress characteristics – the siren-like singing, her daisy-like physical appearance – but beyond looks Hilda is an mentally and emotionally strong individual, especially considering with the personal conflicts she deals with for almost the entire span of the movie. Comparing Takahata’s Hilda to her earlier Disney counterpart, Aurora/Briar Rose (Sleeping Beauty, 1959), is like looking at two different eras of social progress – the former the more progressive advocate of gender equality and the latter bent on chivalry and perpetual D.I.D.s who like being swept off their heeled-toed feet.
Hayao Miyazaki on the left, Isao Takahata on the right
I like to believe Horus: Prince of the Sun marks the beginning of Takahata’s (and Miyazaki’s) conscious effort to move away from traditional Disney fare, storytelling, and animation aesthetics; yet ironically Horus has numerous elements in vein with Disney productions, which makes it an interesting hybrid: a product highly influenced by Western endeavors while actively trying to establish distinctly Eastern foundations – all with regards to animating stories and the characters within. Horus may easily be one of the most exceptional and overlooked gems in the world of animated films, and it’s a film I can’t recommend enough to those interested in animation, anime, Studio Ghibli and Disney productions.
The boundary between reality and fantasy is porous and unstable; everything, including inanimate objects, is alive and responds magically to wishes and fears. There are mysteries and secrets everywhere, as in the lives of children, who are kept in the dark about fundamental realities – sex, death, money, and the whole complex mystery of their parents’ desires and disappointments – Elizabeth Dalton, from the Introduction to Grimm’s Fairy Tales, published 2003 by Barnes & Nobles Classics
Disney is a staple to American cinema. The name itself is a brand, hailing nearly fifty animated theatrical releases with its recent film, The Princess and the Frog, its 49th, and another unveiling this fall, Tangled, its golden 50th.
But these recent films come nowhere near to the dare and darkness of some of the original Disney animated films, the fears evoked so deeply by fairy-, folk- and morality tales. Yes, they began the tradition of integrated musicals into animation that lasted for decades until arguably the turning of the 21st century, but these films – from Snow White to Sleeping Beauty – are in a class of their own, films that will likely stand the test of time because they tap into the subconscious of our childhood that we will never fully understand or ever let go of.
My mother watched the classic Brothers Grimm inspired Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in Vietnam when she was a little girl, and relayed to me how scary the experience was – thrilling, but traumatizing. There was the sudden turn of the forest’s mood – from charming and inviting to mysterious and dangerous in an instant – and the evil Queen, the devilish witch who was something else: vain, proud, selfish, jealous, and most terrifying of all incredibly human. She was something tangible, something we could see happening in real life, and by all means she shook your sense of security that much more. Feasibly, the evil Queen embodied the rage of the maternal figure that as children, we all feared would unleash and unveil amidst her soothing comfort and maternal care – a motif often embodied by evil stepmothers in collected stories of the Brothers Grimm like in Cinderella (interesting enough, the Brothers Grimm edited a lot of the original stories in a second publishing of their collected stories; one of the changes they made was to charge the evil doings of maternal figures to that of stepmothers, for in most of the original stories it was actually the birth mothers that committed such atrocities. However, they felt these details were too shocking and unappealing in the original publishing, and amended such changes in later editions).
We looked to Snow White as the character we wanted to succeed, to rise above the injustice bestowed upon her evil stepmother; her dark hair only made her skin even lighter, a literal embodiment of her own purity and namesake. The friendly dwarfs were, in a sense, an extension of us, the audience: various emotions personified, each dwarf was a supportive beam to dear Snow White as she struggled to make ends meet. These dwarfs set the stage for later DIsney films, in which there is the straight-laced protagonist followed by a group of bubbly side-characters who interject interludes of humor and relief, something the audience wanted during long periods of narratives that are otherwise intense and dramatic. And the Prince – the blessed, angelic Prince – was the savior at the end of the day, the one who could bestow upon the kiss that awaken Snow White from her slumbering nightmare. He was that God-like entity that we wished to sweep down kindly upon the righteous and pious Snow White, the happy ending we believed she so deserved after all such trials of her strength of character. With that kiss, Disney generated the origin of the classic Disney series of fables that we still identify easily today – the classic Princess lore.
Following Snow White immediately was Pinnochio, based on the beloved fairy tale of Florentine writer Carlo Collodi. Arguably, Pinocchio is Disney’s most Christian morality tale to date: a young puppet, brought to life by the God power of the Blue Fairy, embarks on a coming-of-age adventure in which he must distinguish between good and bad before he become a full-fleshed, pure human boy; his only aids for understanding such distinctions are his consciousness, embodied and personified by a chirpy Jiminy Cricket, and his nose – if he lies it will grow longer and longer until he tells the truth, and only then will it stink back to normal size. Symbolically, Pinocchio’s growing nose represents the increasing pressure and weight of accumulated lies on one’s subconsciousness; if the nose becomes long, Pinocchio will lose his balance and fall over, unable to proceed forward in life towards becoming a human boy, symbolic of a barrier on one’s progression towards moral purity.
There is a scene where upon strolling to school – a symbol of enlightenment – Pinocchio is stopped by a wily Fox and Cat, ironically named Honest John and Gideon, who convince him to become an actor (a entity of the theatre, a realm traditionally deemed as one of heathen debauchery) in Stromboli’s puppet show, where he is initially lauded but immediately imprisoned by the greedy puppeteer, an iconic representation of the greedy show producer and entrepreneur. And though Pinocchio escapes his predicament of a life chained to entertainment exploitation, he is tricked once again by Honest John and Gideon to saunter off to an even greater vice, Pleasure Island.
There is one scene in Pleasure Island that is particularly jarring. After the crowd of boys have indulged in their various pleasures – sweets and fats, rides and games, shooting pool, beer drinking and tobacco smoking – the island becomes eerily quiet, foreshadowing to a horrific episode that is disturbing even by today’s standards: Lampwick, Pinocchio’s companion, slowly begins turning into a donkey, and his horror and panic he begins screaming for his mother as a last resort for salvation. But it is too late, and we see his human shadow transform into a donkey, a beast no longer acceptable by human standards and now doomed to work in the salt mines like all the other naughty, sinful boys who have also turned into inarticulate jackasses. Pinocchio escapes this predicament too, but barely and scarred: he is marked by his donkey tail and jutting ears, indicative of the peril one encounters if one gorges for too long on immoral pleasures.
The climax is arguably the most Biblical, alluding greatly to the tale of Jonah and the Whale: it is when Pinocchio goes to rescue his beloved and all-good father, Geppetto, who has been swallowed by the wicked giant whale, Monstro. Monstro represents a turning point in Pinocchio’s character, where he casts aside all selfish desires to pursue a seemingly suicidal but ultimately altruistic quest out of love; and in being swallowed by the beast, he conceits an ingenious plan to escape an untimely death. The pinnacle moment, when Pinocchio saves Geppetto at the cost of his own life, is the ultimate Christian message: a self-sacrificing feat out of pure goodness, a complete disregard for one’s own life, is what draws the Blue Fairy back and grants Pinocchio the ultimate form of pious virtue – human flesh and blood, a sense of human mortality that is forever more.
If Pinocchio is arguably the most Christian fable in the Disney legacy, then Bambi is the most emotionally devastating. Based on the book Bambi, a Life in the Woods by Austrian author Felix Salten, the film plays off one of the greatest fears children could possibly have – maternal loss.
There is a cold objectivism that Death heralds. It abides by no favoritism, and silently collects those whose times have ended. In Bambi, Disney enraptured our hearts and twisted it into a great, big knot at the height of tragedy: Bambi, while feasting with his mother, is forced to flee at his mother’s warning, hearing only a gun shot in the far off distance; when he comes back to find his mother, she is nowhere. Death has kissed her brow and has left Bambi behind, orphaned and alone.
There’s a reason why children cry often at this scene: Bambi is them, still adolescent and unknowing, and the cruel swiftness of Death from an external, uncontrollable factor has left him abandoned and unguided. It’s a terrifying feeling, to feel abandoned; as a child, I used to panic when I didn’t see my mother for long periods of time, feelings of abandonment and helplessness taking over like a icy cancer. Bambi’s famous scene highlights this childhood fear, a cinematic extension and narrative realization of a childhood insecurity that haunts us all in the subconscious. The rest of the film is one of healing and growing up, of finding a path by one’s own accord and establishing oneself in the vast, vast world.
Bambi is a terrific feat in the coming-of-age fable, where he is comforted only by his remaining paternal figure (whom he strives to become, and eventually does after trials of adolescence) and his bubbly friends. Sexual awakening, flirtation, aggression, territorial pride, and a last encounter with the same external, uncontrollable factor that took away his mother and traumatized him as a child, mankind – all of these elements of one’s development are present, and ingeniously narrated by lush colors, fluid animation and by tapping into one of the great fears of childhood. Bambi is a great demonstration of the sacred bond shared between mother and child, and by narrating a tragic loss it echoed how essential such a relationship is, and how psychologically traumatizing it is to the child when the relationship is cut prematurely. Once something is gone, only then do we realize how important that something was, and such is what Bambi narrated so famously.
Last in the line of Disney’s classic and haunting fables is that of Sleeping Beauty, first published by Charles Perrault in Contes de ma Mère l'Oye (Tales of Mother Goose). The Disney adaptation borrowed heavily from Peter Tchaikovsky’s 1890 ballet – in fact, the entire soundtrack is Tchaikovsky’s composition, save the chorus and lyrical addendums in the songs “Skumps” (the Drinking Song) and “Once Upon a Dream” – and the story is more inspired by the German variant collected by the Brothers Grimm, titled Briar Rose.
Disney’s Sleeping Beauty is striking in its explicit and implicit symbolism. On first glance, goodness is embodied by the three colorful fairies – the pink Flora, the green Fauna, and the blue Merryweather – and evil is embodied by the dark purple, black-draped and olive skinned Maleficent. Even their living quarters are drastically different: the fairies take refuge in a inviting and lush, maternal-like forest tree while Maleficent resides in a dark, phallic tower. These are the two competing forces of good and evil, two supernatural and majestical entities that compete for power and authority in the human realm.
What is interesting is the subtle implications of the Brothers Grimm-inspired story, in which a infant Princess Aurora is cursed by the evil Maleficent, who is spiteful for receiving no invitation to Aurora’s christening. Aurora, named after the Roman goddess of dawn, is symbolic of the beginning daylight and its associated goodness and hope; yet instantly she is clashed by her polar opposite entity, Maleficent (translated “evil-doer”) who embodies the evils and gloom of a moonless, pitch black night. Already polar opposite entities clash with the birth of a new dawn, and the fairies come to the Princesses defense after the malevolent entity has placed her wicked curse. In an effort to deter Maleficent’s hex, the fairies take Aurora into refuge and rename her Briar Rose, and the King burns all the spinning wheels in the country.
This is a particularly striking scene because it is allegorical of a paternal figure’s protection of their daughter’s virginity. The spindles of the spinning wheels are representative of temptation and lust, burned in a fiery precaution; additionally, the fairies sweep the Princess into a nunnery-like sanctuary, ironically naming her Briar Rose in lieu of her father’s symbolic actions. That is, the name Briar Rose is one of virginal temptation, a beautiful rose that is desirable but must be clipped (essentially deflowered) in order to be handled by anyone who desires such. It’s interesting that the fairies chose such a name in conjunction with her father’s protective measures, which together (the actions of the King and fairies) could be construed as representing a protective measure for ensuring virginal and sexual purity before his daughter is to be wed to the betrothed Prince Phillip.
Alas, Briar Rose has her first sexual encounter with the charming Prince Phillip, and as they rendezvous in the forest we can see that she is, in a sense, no longer pure: that with her first encounter with a man her romantic fantasies have been realized, and that her sexual desires are not blossoming in full bloom. She is a nymph, now caught up in the worldly affairs of romance and chivalry, and is no longer the adolescent and innocent girl as before. The fairies, upon realizing this, are grateful that it is the day they must return her to her rightful throne to be wed – a symbolic move that again reaffirms their desire to keep the Princess pious and pure until her wedding day. Unfortunately, though, the fairies’ lapse in judgement (after using magic to create presents and a cake for Rose’s birthday) causes Maleficent to see their plan, and she is able to concoct a hypnotizing spell that causes the Princess to prick her finger on one single spinning wheel, upon which the Princess (and subsequently, the Kingdom) falls into a great slumber and not death (thanks to the protective powers of the good fairies).
The spindle is a particular symbol of sexual awakening. In pricking her finger, Rose begins bleeding – the beginning of female menstruation. That she essentially dies from this encounter is equally striking in symbolism: in experiencing premature sexual awakening, Rose is no longer a virginal figure since she has given into the hypnotic temptation of the spinning wheel, influenced by none other than the evil and sinful Maleficent. The ensuing slumber induced by the fairies is a last resort attempt to preserve the Princess’s piousness, a way to ensure that she no longer pursues other (symbolically) sexually driven encounters before she is to be wed.
In a strange way, we could easily construe Maleficent as a defender of feminine independence while the good fairies are defenders of the patriarchal norm. Yes, Maleficent is a wicked entity that wreaks destruction on the kingdom, but consider this: the monarchal system is patriarchal, and in disrupting its order Maleficent is essentially disrupting the patriarchal norm. On the latter fold, the fairies are trying to guide Aurora to wed her betrothed, essentially reestablishing the feminine subservience and adherence to purity before her first real sexual experience with her future husband. In cursing Princess Aurora to die by upon the spindle’s prick, Maleficent is allegorically discouraging the young royal from engaging in the fancies of men’s company; furthermore, she imprisons Prince Phillip, a effort symbolic in hindering any chivalric attempt to arouse the slumbering, virginal Princess. She ridicules the young Prince, essentially breaking norm in asserting her feminine independence above his masculine birthright, psychologically taunting him of his finite existence as a mortal male in the scheme of time. Lastly, there’s the climatic scene where Maleficent covers the kingdom in thorns and transforms herself into a monstrous dragon to defend her domain – it’s incredibly sexual and phallic in symbology.
The thorns, like the spindle, are prickling and hindering in Phillip’s attempts to get to Aurora’s sleeping place, and are an ironic allusion to the virginal namesake of the Princess, Briar Rose: that is, in order to fully appreciate the beauty and sexual appeal of the young woman, Prince Phillip must essentially pluck her, and will only be able to do so when he destroys all the prickling thorns of the path (representative of a flower’s stem) before he encounters the sexual appeal of the blossom; he receives help from the three fairies, whose actions are very symbolic of the patriarchal ideals they conform to – that Aurora should be sexually awakened by none other than her betrothed, the chivalric Phillip. However, when he has nearly cleared away all the inhibiting thorns, Maleficent transforms into the dragon, a last ditch effort to prevent the advent Prince from asserting his patriarchal authority over the sleeping beauty.
This distinctly protective gesture is interesting: while most interpret it as a evil force deterring a noble and heroic effort to restore the natural balance, it must be noted that Maleficent transforms into a mythological creature that has distinctly reptilian qualities – the flickering tongue, the scaled skin, the segmented belly – and, in a sense, is almost androgynous in its physical quality. There is no explicit physical attribute that indicates gender in regards to dragons, and Maleficent’s dragon is just as indistinguishable save its booming, feminine voice. She viciously attacks the patriarchal embodiment of Prince Phillip, a effort that further demonstrates her scathing spite against patriarchal rule as she reaffirms her feminine authority. Only when she is pierced in the heart by the Prince’s sword does she die, a attack from the Prince that is arguably phallic and representative of patriarchal authority; that is, only when Maleficent is directly stricken by the phallic sword (essentially raped) does she die and relinquish her feminine control of the kingdom, and thus order and normalcy of the patriarchal monarch is restored, and everyone lives happily ever after.
Scholars and philosophers have argued about what stories like these are actually representative of, and what values they endorse. Jack Zipe, in his Marxist analysis of the Brothers Grimm and their work, focused on the social and historical context, and the consciousness of the Brothers Grimm themselves; he believed that children were being indoctrinated by bourgeois ideals:
The male hero learns to be active, competitive, handsome, industrious, cunning, acquisitive. His goal is money, power, and a woman (also associated with chattel). His jurisdiction is the open world. His happiness depends on the just use of power. The female hero learns to be passive, obedient, self-sacrificing, hard-working, patient, and straight-laced. Her goal is wealth, jewels, and a man to protect her property rights. Her jurisdiction is the home or castle. Her happiness depends on conformity to patriarchal rule.
– pg. 57 of Zipe’s Fairy Tales and the Art of Subversion
Zipe’s pessimistic views of fairy- and folklore contrasts sharply with the more optimistic interpretation of Bruno Bettelheim. Bettelheim was not concerned with the historical or political context, instead focusing on the tales’ timeless and symbolic representations of childhood:
By dealing with universal human problems, particularly those which occupy a child’s mind, these stories speak of his budding ego and encourage its development, while at the same time relieving preconscious and unconscious pressures.
– pg. 6 of Bettelheim’s The Uses of Enchantment
Whatever the Grimms actually intended for interpretation we will never know. But what is true of their collected and likewise authors is that these stories, these fables are striking and classic because of the various explicit and implicit nuances of symbols and implications they open up. The Disney Renaissance of Beauty and the Beast and The Lion King drew from similar roots, but not quite as hauntingly as their predecessors achieved. These are the reasons why the four Disney movies I’ve mentioned – Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Pinocchio, Bambi and Sleeping Beauty – are amazing feats of cinematic storytelling and have remained classic staples in the Disney legacy still to this day.
“Toy Story 3” is an amazing feat in storytelling. It accomplishes so many things in only 103 minutes that other trilogies and sequels – Star Wars, Back to the Future, Spider-Man, Indiana Jones, Ocean’s Eleven, The Matrix – never came close to: creating a film that is simultaneously continuous and very capable of being a stand alone. It is moving, smart, funny, dark, scary, sad, hopeful – all in an ingeniously conclusive end to one of the most beloved American stories that further reaffirms Pixar as a master of storytelling and animation.
Warning: minor, mild and major spoilers in the article.
It must be noted that all images of “Toy Story 3” were taken directly from trailers or were promotional stills released by Pixar.
The Beginnings of Pixar’s Wonder and Magic
The original “Toy Story” captured the hearts of every viewer, for we all remembered our childhood filled with boundless imagination and innocence shared with and acted through our toys. It not only created incredibly human characters out of toys – pride, romance, jealously, insecurity, rational, etcetera – but established the sacredness, timelessness and preciousness of love shared between child and toy. Absolutely illogical and pure. Beautiful.
“Toy Story 2” hinted about toy economics, specifically about their ultimate value and fate – would they become a priceless collectible or indistinguishable trash? We all know eventually a majority of childhood tokens will break, be sold or given away; such is the invariability of growth, maturity and time. However, in “Toy Story 2” Andy is still a boy and still very much in love with his toys, and that to prematurely succumb to the temptation of being a pristine collectible was unwise and ultimately unattractive – at the time, it was much more important and valuable for Woody to remain as Andy’s treasured toy, tossed and bounced and played about in pure bouts of love and joy.
Both movies are classical childhood tales, tales based off imagination and incredibly human emotions. The politics and economics commanding the toys were hinted, but only enough to not distract away from the main focus of a child’s unbounded love for his toys. It was pure imaginative genius, touching and invaluable in message all at once – the touch of Pixar’s creative process and dedicated team.
Unfortunately, Pixar’s genius was not valued by everyone when it first started.
Eisner and the business of Circle 7
“Toy Story 3” was not originally planned by Pixar, nor was “Toy Story 2.” Both sequels were the result of Disney’s management and its desire to take over Pixar’s creative reins, spearheaded none other than Michael Eisner.
Some of you remember all those terrible direct-to-video sequels that looked and felt like nothing the original theatrical releases: "Aladdin 2: Jafar’s Return,“ "Pocahontas 2: Journey to a New World,” “The Lion King 2: Simba’s Pride” – remember these guys? They had Eisner written all over them. He saw creativity as a product to be reaped and sowed and drained for all its worth. To him, the magic and wonder of Disney’s legendary status was nothing more than a profit margin, a business model. He considered Pixar no differently.
“Toy Story 2” was initially a direct-to-video sequel, but upon seeing the in-work imagery Disney executives were so impressed that they requested it be turned into a theatrical release; however, the creative team at Pixar were not happy with the work, eventually getting John Lasseter back on board to rewrite the entire script and finish the film in a period of nine months (leading to some animators getting repetitive stress injuries) in order to meet Disney’s deadline. Additionally, since Disney felt that “Toy Story 2” was negotiated outside of five-picture deal they had with Pixar, it would not be counted as one of the films. This negotiation left a poor spot for Pixar, the first of many they would soon have with Disney’s CEO, Michael Eisner. In his own words, Eisner believed that “all creative teams go in cycles, and Pixar is riding for a fall."
Nice man.
Hoping to bully Pixar into a new contract that would ultimately favor Disney’s executive control over Pixar’s creative rights, Eisner created Circle 7 Animation to franchise Pixar’s characters and stories – it was exactly like his scheme with the flux of direct-to-video sequels during the Disney renaissance all over again. Circle 7’s first production would be "Toy Story 3,” in which Buzz Lightyear would have a defect, be shipped off to Taiwan, then on some adventure Andy’s toys go to rescue him as Buzz met some new friends along the way (in a sense, it was a carbon copy of “Toy Story 2’s” plot).
The original promotional for Circle 7’s “Toy Story 3."
This was a million-of-dollars attempt to bargain Disney as Pixar’s sole distributor – Michael Eisner style. Of course this led to the infamous split between Pixar and Disney in 2004 when Pixar CEO Steve Jobs and Disney’s Eisner bickered vehemently about how Pixar should be handled creatively and monetarily; only with Eisner’s departure from Disney in 2005 was Pixar able to renegotiate a much, much better contract with Disney: the new Disney CEO, Rob Iger, buried Eisner’s pet projects and all of his notorious footprints, and Pixar’s John Lasseter and Ed Catmull would run all of Disney animation. No more Eisner micromanagement, no more terrible and unnecessary sequels, no more "money money money!!!”-driven projects – it was a breath of fresh air back into Disney and the barrier Pixar finally overcame.
Of course, one of the first decisions of Lasseter and Catmull was to dismantle Circle 7 and shelve the original “Toy Story 3” script far and away (in a generous gesture, they found work inside Disney for 140 of the 170 Circle 7 employees). Pixar once again had it’s prodigy back, safe and sound and away from the scary Eisner monster that lurks beneath the innocent beds of children’s hopes and dreams.
The Challenge of Closure
“Toy Story 3” was no walk in the park. It took the minds of Pixar creative seniors John Lasseter (“Toy Story,” “Toy Story 2” and “Cars”), Pete Docter (“Monsters, Inc.” and “Up”), Andrew Stanton (“Finding Nemo” and “Wall•E”) and Lee Unkrich (film editor and co-director of several Pixar films) to come up with the story over a weekend at the same house where they originally conceived “Toy Story.” Stanton wrote the treatment, Michael Arndt (writer of “Little Miss Sunshine”) wrote the screenplay and Unkrich was slated to direct in his directorial debut. And hell, what a movie it was.
The conclusion of the trilogy is significantly darker with subtexts extending well beyond the comprehension and significance of kid’s minds (Guatanamo bay, pyramid schemes, the manipulation of politics, effects of consumerism) that many older viewers are all too familiar and jaded with. And that’s just the thing: there is a certain jadedness that come with growing up. We become increasingly more self- and consciously aware of our surroundings, which in turn deters us from divulging into childhood fancies unhindered by logic or meaning and driven solely by love and imagination.
Here, the main conflict is in the toys and Andy reestablishing their relationship and meaning to one another. The opening montage hauntingly ends with the famous musical phrase by Randy Newman, “our friendship will never die…” before fading into present day, presumably ten years later. Andy is 17, about to depart to college, and probably has not played with Woody and the gang for many years at this point. A futile attempt of the toys to be played with one last time before their assumed fate in the attic happens marks this rift: the toys’ existence as childhood gems no longer resonate with Andy’s current transition in life from adolescence to young adult. It’s a sad opening, heartbreaking even.
Woody, Buzz and the gang have long been self-aware of their own existence, economics and politics – however, this is brazenly clear and stated in the third installment as opposed to the first two, where the idea was presented but not particularly or deeply explored. After all, if Andy’s toys are, in a sense, sentient and aware of their own being, they must at least know their golden time with their owner must come to end. What happens and how they deal with it is the secondary conflict that drives “Toy Story 3” to greatness.
When Woody and the gang are accidentally donated to the daycare center Sunnyside, they dive into a world populated with more toys than they could ever fathom beyond Andy’s childhood collection. The politics and economics, however, are iron-fisted by Lotso, and this in turn establishes what is otherwise an action-packed, comedic, dramatic and hilarious adventure for Andy’s toys to overcome and escape from in order to return to the comfort and familiarity of their home, Andy’s room.
The middle act is nothing spectacularly original – a great many movies rely on this to bridge the opening and ending satisfactorily – but the driving force and ideas about toy economics and politics are very much so. To the unobservant or unempathetic, they may not notice that the middle arc subtly implies an overall thematic of the entire Toy Story lore: of the love between child and toy that transcends time through the sheer strength and significance of previous, everlasting memories.
The middle act implies the simultaneous and last growth in the relationship between Andy and his toys: this is a pivotal moment of separation, and it is their memories and love that ultimately bind them to each other in the end. Woody is driven to go back to Andy as a testament that he and his friends are still somehow meaningful in Andy’s life – that Andy is now just a iteration of his previous self, but not entirely different, and that somehow the spirit and ghost of Andy’s childhood is very much part of the now older Andy. Reassurance and reestablishment are absolutely necessary at this point, and it’s what drives the toys to act and do in their current situation of anxiety, stress and uncertainty.
In the end, the primary conflict of reassurance and reestablishment resolves after trials and obstacles of separation and despair presented in the secondary conflict; it helps Andy and his toys realize how in spite of the years of rift, they still and will always hold special places in each others hearts. The memories and emotions – those will always be there. Even when Woody and the gang will no longer be played with by Andy as they once were they now know that he still thinks of them, remembers them, cherishes them just as much as he once did – in mind and heart. And that’s enough for everyone to finally move on, to finally go with their respective life with the assurance and loving memories intact forever more.
A Generational Difference
The reception and comments from critics demonstrated one of the greatest generational differences I’ve seen in awhile. Several critics have commented that this third installment lacked the heart the first two had and was significantly darker, that on several occasions it was unoriginal in conceit; some remarked that it was perhaps longer than needed; a few even believed that it lacked the emotional brilliance of last year’s “Up."
What many of these critics fail to realize is that "Toy Story 3” tackles one of the most difficult points in life – the transition from teenage adolescence to young adulthood when one has just graduated from high school and is about to go afar to a college or university. It’s an incredibly difficult time period, filled with anxiety, uncertainty and even a fair amount of grief as parents cope with impending separation and the transitioning individual copes with sorting out tokens from childhood and adolescence and starting afresh as a young, eager-minded adult.
Spanish Buzz is full of win.
This is not to say tackling and addressing the fate of toys when their owner reach this transition period was not implied previously. “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2” hinted several times that the toys would ultimately need to deal with this transitional issue, but only now has the issue been fully addressed head on.
Depicting these pivotal moments is incredibly difficult: it’s so easy to forget distinctions of immediate joy and grief that made up childhood; commonly, we indulge in notions of bliss and innocence, conveniently forgetting or ignoring incidents and characteristics that made them distinctly dramatic, comedic and human. Even more difficult is the distinguishing traits between the end of teenage adolescence and the beginnings of young adulthood – something that “Toy Story 3” daringly confronts unlike any other childhood fable I’ve seen to grace cinema.
Judging from the feedback I’m receiving, “Toy Story 3” has people in tears. If anything, they like it more than “Up.” – Roger Ebert via @ebertchicago
I concede that the first minutes of “Up” were absolutely brilliant: the marriage montage left me teary-eyed, emotionally moved and shaken by its incredible conceit and execution. However, the rest of the story dives into a Man of La Mancha, Don Quixote-inspired parable style, with quirky sidekick characters derived from caricatures and little else. There was an adventure that led Carl to eventually let go and move on, yes, but compared to the brilliance of the opening there was little I found that remotely compared or came close to evoking the same emotions or empathy; it was cute and funny, but the emotional impact of “Up” belongs solely to its first few minutes.
“Toy Story 3,” on the other hand, has been in the making for over 15 years. We’ve grown up with the characters, and our fond memories of the first two films still hold strong. Pixar has gone through countless negotiations and renovations with Disney before their current business and distributional status – all in the name of creating greatly emotional and human stories that are timeless and unbounded by the technology of their animation.
This film’s emotional impact about adolescent transition resonates deeply not only with those going through the same or clearly remembering of such a period, but with the audience that remembers the trilogy’s conceit and overarching narrative; finally, we all have closure on the story of Andy and his beloved Woody, Buzz and other toys. It’s about how an emerging young adult deals with tokens from his childhood and remembering and reestablishing what and how much they mean to him – something that I’m sure all of us could sympathize and empathize with.
Good-Bye, Old Friends
This is a moment that has been built up since 1995 when we first saw Woody and the toys charm and grace the screen with their emotions, drama and comedy. We all knew this time would come, when Andy would grow up and leave for college – but never could we have foreseen how he and the toys would conclude their years of fun, heartbreak and imagination.
And now that we know they’re all in good hands – that little Bonnie will be their next keeper and that there will be added ears to the tenure before their ultimate conclusion – we at least know that to Andy, his toys will forever be icons of childhood, and that Woody and the gang share these same sentients – of childhood, of reassurance in their significance and meaning to one another, and of the timeless love of a child that is ceaseless and everlasting in ghost and memories.
Good-bye, old friends. May your next adventure be as memorable as the ones you’ve shared with us.
