Watching the trailer for the first time was a wonderfully magical experience, and I anticipated a magical and fantastic adventure into Imagination.
Sadly, the trailer contained the best parts of that adventure, and in my personal opinion, the best parts of the movie. I am sorry but the trailer completely prepared me only for the magic, not the mundane. I was anticipating wonder, but ended up seeing war.
The movie opens with an eerie tale of the Underground Realm and the loss of its Princess, who wandered into the world above and was blinded by the sun so she lost all memory of her homeland. The King, her father, awaited her return, perhaps in another body.
There is a simple layering immediately as our heroine puts down the book she’s reading; her story and the story overlapping. Nice.
There is a air of wonderment for the first 10 minutes of the movie as the heroine explores, restoring an eye to a stone statue, and conversing with a strange cricket-like insect, which she calls a fairy.
This wonderment is quickly lost once the Captain appears onscreen, with his stiff starched military uniform and square-jawed presence. And it is never quite regained, save for precious few moments in the war-torn movie.
I enjoyed the magical bits tremendously, for it was, after all, what I had come to expect from the very enticing trailer. My boyfriend made the observation that even in her imagination, the creatures were not clean-cut fun and laughter, but very…dark (for want of a better word). There is always an aura of menace surrounding all those magical creatures. He said this was the harshness of the real world permeating even the heroine’s fantasy world. This refreshes the traditional and trite concept of the magical world with this touch of sad reality that lends it that haunting quality in the trailer, intriguing so many with its eerie charm.
I hate to say I failed to enjoy the interspersed reality and the magical world, which I understand is the whole beauty of the movie. The layers, the parallels, the brilliance of bringing it all together, the raw emotions… I failed to drink in the beauty of all that, having had my appetite whetted for a journey of fantasy and magic, which made up, perhaps 30% of the movie, and was quite forgotten in the height of the moments where blood and torture scenes come onscreen. I should have been warned when I found out the movie was R21 cut to NC16.
Sadly, the trailer contained the best parts of that adventure, and in my personal opinion, the best parts of the movie. I am sorry but the trailer completely prepared me only for the magic, not the mundane. I was anticipating wonder, but ended up seeing war.
The movie opens with an eerie tale of the Underground Realm and the loss of its Princess, who wandered into the world above and was blinded by the sun so she lost all memory of her homeland. The King, her father, awaited her return, perhaps in another body.
There is a simple layering immediately as our heroine puts down the book she’s reading; her story and the story overlapping. Nice.
There is a air of wonderment for the first 10 minutes of the movie as the heroine explores, restoring an eye to a stone statue, and conversing with a strange cricket-like insect, which she calls a fairy.
This wonderment is quickly lost once the Captain appears onscreen, with his stiff starched military uniform and square-jawed presence. And it is never quite regained, save for precious few moments in the war-torn movie.
I enjoyed the magical bits tremendously, for it was, after all, what I had come to expect from the very enticing trailer. My boyfriend made the observation that even in her imagination, the creatures were not clean-cut fun and laughter, but very…dark (for want of a better word). There is always an aura of menace surrounding all those magical creatures. He said this was the harshness of the real world permeating even the heroine’s fantasy world. This refreshes the traditional and trite concept of the magical world with this touch of sad reality that lends it that haunting quality in the trailer, intriguing so many with its eerie charm.
I hate to say I failed to enjoy the interspersed reality and the magical world, which I understand is the whole beauty of the movie. The layers, the parallels, the brilliance of bringing it all together, the raw emotions… I failed to drink in the beauty of all that, having had my appetite whetted for a journey of fantasy and magic, which made up, perhaps 30% of the movie, and was quite forgotten in the height of the moments where blood and torture scenes come onscreen. I should have been warned when I found out the movie was R21 cut to NC16.
Acting-wise, our heroine fulfilled her role well, though I must say I was not all too sympathetic for her character. She does a lot of stupid things that really make you scream at the screen; things like eating the grapes on the table of a bloody scary looking monster with eyeballs on plates in front of it and wall murals of that same monster spearing children and eating them! Sheesh, it's only grapes! Maybe if this was the time of From Hell, where grapes were such a luxury they could lure women to their deaths, then I would forgive her thoughtlessness. But I must applaud the young girl for doing a perfectly decent job of holding her own as a lead actress and for what I believe to be a genuine portrayal of a child whose innocence struggles to lead her through the harshness of war. Also, any actress willing to crawl through mud has her heart and mind in the right place, in other words not a young diva in the making.
I found myself in a state of pondering after the movie – I had that oh-so-rare feeling that something had touched me, except I didn’t know what. I liked debating with my boyfriend whether everything the heroine went through was only in her head or real like ‘i-can-touch’ real. That scene where the heroine speaks with the faun, followed by the shot where we look at things from the Captain’s perspective and see no faun was our main evidence for debate. Just because other people couldn’t see the same things she did does not make them unreal, I say. One could very well say that the Captain was blind as much as our heroine was super-sensitive (like how they describe those paranormal-inclined ladies who make predictions and stuff). If it’s real to you, that’s as real as it gets. Yet I just thought, the tragic beauty could lie in how the heroine’s imagination still offered her no escape from death, but upon death did she find release from the limits of her imagination here on earth, to gain her entry into the true fantasy. Interestingly, the colors of her fantasy world are brightest after she died, as if they had shook off that haunting grayness that they had previously when her she tried to house her imagination on earth. Perhaps earth is too grey for the fullness of our imaginations and fantasies.
I think I’m going to watch the trailer again. The trailer rates 10 out of 10, and the movie 7.0. Sorry.
I found myself in a state of pondering after the movie – I had that oh-so-rare feeling that something had touched me, except I didn’t know what. I liked debating with my boyfriend whether everything the heroine went through was only in her head or real like ‘i-can-touch’ real. That scene where the heroine speaks with the faun, followed by the shot where we look at things from the Captain’s perspective and see no faun was our main evidence for debate. Just because other people couldn’t see the same things she did does not make them unreal, I say. One could very well say that the Captain was blind as much as our heroine was super-sensitive (like how they describe those paranormal-inclined ladies who make predictions and stuff). If it’s real to you, that’s as real as it gets. Yet I just thought, the tragic beauty could lie in how the heroine’s imagination still offered her no escape from death, but upon death did she find release from the limits of her imagination here on earth, to gain her entry into the true fantasy. Interestingly, the colors of her fantasy world are brightest after she died, as if they had shook off that haunting grayness that they had previously when her she tried to house her imagination on earth. Perhaps earth is too grey for the fullness of our imaginations and fantasies.
I think I’m going to watch the trailer again. The trailer rates 10 out of 10, and the movie 7.0. Sorry.
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