When I was little, I hated Fantasia. It was long. No one talked. It was boring. Revisiting it now, though, my perspective is completely changed.
The experience of watching Fantasia is essentially that of going to see a symphony perform, but with amazing visual interpretations of the pieces added on top. The animation here is stunning, once again improving on the previous feature (in this case, Pinocchio). What’s most striking is the variety of animation styles employed and how greatly most of them differ from what we commonly consider to be the “Disney look.” It is truly unfortunate that this film didn’t do better in its initial release so that Walt would have been emboldened to not only fulfill his vision of constantly adding to and modifying Fantasia itself, but also to continue with more experimental animation projects.
Unfortunately, today’s children will likely still have all the same problems with the film that I did as a child, possibly even exacerbated given that the pace of entertainment they’re used is even greater than that of my own childhood, but the film’s really not for them. It’s for the slightly older audiences, those who appreciate classical music or great art, and for these audiences, one can’t do much better than Fantasia.
Next: Bambi
No comments:
Post a Comment