The brilliance of Fantasia is of course the music. It is an astoundingly bold idea to allow the music free reign over the plot of a story as opposed to the other way around which is usually the case. However, I think Disney has always understood the importance of music to plot. Take for instance his early work on the Silly Symphonies. What drives those little cartoons and makes them memorable is how expertly music is woven into the plot.
However, I'm not going to fly too far into the idea of visual music and music theory. I hardly know a thing about it aside from that it exists and that some people can talk about it for hours (btw, kudos to those people, I find their vocabulary alone to be fascinating).
Due to the insane volume of homework I have these days I was unfortunately not able to give Fantasia my full and undivided attention while I was watching it as I usually would have done. Instead I ended up working on a painting while Fantasia played in the background. Usually this kind of callous inattention would have shamed me to my core but with Fantasia it felt oddly appropriate. Also, it sure helped me get through the horrifyingly lame parts of this movie.
So...let's talk artistic style.
I love how dramatic, bold, and graphic the orchestral scenes are in this movie. The black silhouette on colored background has become iconic. Stokowski standing on that pedestal with his baton raised as the background shifts from oranges to reds is thrilling and sends the chill of anticipation down my spine.
Then they launch into Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and although that starts off visually strong and compelling it soon laps into weird. The visions of bow strings dancing through dream-like clouds turns into a sea sick adventure on rust colored waves. Bleh. Disney, I know you and Dali were BFF's and all but I don't know if it was such a good idea to listen to his input so closely.
It's ok though, Fantasia is saved from ruin by the charming rendition of Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite. Although this one isn't a complete favorite of mine...I'm not a fan of ambiguous backgrounds which is evident while those little Chinese mushrooms, the flower people, and the goldfish dance. However, I'm in love with the fairies as they change the seasons from Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter. It always reminds me of when I was very young and my parents would take us children on a drive through the canyon to look for the "Fall Fairies" when the leaves would start to change color in Autumn. I stuck to the idea that they were real much harder than I ever did to the idea of Santa Claus. I remember one time being very frustrated that I could never find any actual fairies and my mom told me "You can't see the fairies but you can find the evidence of them by the changing colors in the leaves." Cop-out to the extreme but it satisfied me. I don't know why we never went searching for "Spring Fairies" or "Summer Fairies" but I loved it all the same.
I don't think there's much to say about The Sorcerer's Apprentice other than the fact that it's awesome. Also, I doubt anyone other than those music people I mentioned earlier would even know about this little piece of music is Mickey Mouse hadn't acted it out for everyone.
Remember when I mentioned the parts of Fantasia that are horrifyingly LAME?? The Rite of Spring piece is that part for certain. I'm sure there are some dinosaur fanatics out there that think this section of Fantasia is awesome but I consider it to be amongst the lamest things Disney ever put into production. Other than giving us an odd account of the history of the prehistoric world it has no redeeming qualities. I don't even consider it to be that well drawn. The anatomy of the dinosaur's doesn't even seem correct. And OMG is it LONG! It was during this scene that I was beyond grateful that I had homework to do so I didn't actually have to watch this shameful monstrosity. Also, since I wasn't actually watching it, I have concluded that The Rite of Spring sounds more like a circus performance that has gone terribly, terribly wrong than a prehistoric vision of LAME.
Then there's a blessed intermission which are always amusing to watch on DVD. After which we learn that if a bassoon were an image it would look like a fart.
I don't have a whole lot to say about The Pastoral Symphony other than I would like to have any elementary school teacher who has ever told one of their students to stop coloring the sky orange because the sky is and always will be blue to watch this movie. The sky is orange about as often as it is blue in this piece and no one ever notices because it looks completely natural. In fact, this whole symphony is an explosion of insane color mixtures and it is mind-blowingly awesome because of it. Also, has anyone else ever noticed that when this number is being introduced half of the mythological names they use are Greek and the other half are Roman? Disney never seems capable of getting their mythology correct.
Dance of the Hours is more or less a bland production to me. It's another one that's full of ambiguous backgrounds. Although I will note that I can think of four Disney movies off the top of my head that feature elephants. Did Walt have a thing for them? Also turning an ostrich into a ballerina is terribly clever and I do love those crocodiles. They are so expressionate (<- spell check is telling me that isn't a word but I don't know how else you would spell it. Anyone out there have ideas?). Ok, ok, one more thing that's pretty awesome about this short is the excellent use of simple shapes to create their creatures. They probably used no more than a circle, a square, and a triangle to construct all those animals. Bravo.
And now we come to the moment everyone's been waiting for. The finale that makes this whole movie worth watching...NIGHT ON BALD MOUNTAIN/AVE MARIA!! I get all twitter-patted just thinking about how pretty this section is. It is so graphic, so bold, so intelligent. I am giddy with excitement remembering how beautiful this scene is. Thank you Kay Nielsen for producing some of the most stunning concept images and inspiration in animation history. I am addicted to patterns and visual rhythm which is why I LOVE the Ave Maria sequence. The image of a long line of robed figures all holding glowing candles as they walk through a forest made to look like the large stained glass windows of a Gothic cathedral is stunning. I love the lines of the trees that are continued through the lines of the figures that are then reflected through the water below the figures. This creates such an amazing visual display on the vertical axis but then they take it another step further by continuing the the rhythm on the horizontal axis with the leaves in the trees making a line followed by the glowing lights the figures are carrying, then the figures themselves, and that brilliant water once again reflects the pattern on the bottom of the screen. This serves to lead the eye both down the image and across so that you follow the line of action all the way to its end. This is so amazing!
I wish Disney could have gotten his wish when it comes to Fantasia. He wanted it to be an on going production with new shorts added to it and old ones taken out regularly so that it would always be new and interesting to watch. I would love it if they did this for the shorts in front of most Disney movies that come out these days. They kind of do...to an extent, but those shorts aren't based on an already existing piece of music. This is why I'm pretty ok with the production of Fantasia 2000, but I'll talk about that on a different day much further down the road.
No comments:
Post a Comment