The movie itself as a piece cinematography is beautiful.
This is where the good part ends, because Michael Ende's story has too many flaws from a mind with a narrow imagination. This is a remake from a puppet show, that should have never been made. Prize winner many years ago or not, his stories are aging very badly.
After seeing the actually very faithful remake of Jim Button (Jim Knopf, an black orphan infant left on a small island in a basket) as a life action movie, the generally fondly remembered and beloved German "Augsburer Puppenkiste" puppet performance on TV from the early 70s was far superior.
It turns out, in a puppet theatre, so much was left to the viewer's imagination, one did not always imagine the scene as it was actually written. The author Michael Ende was of a strange mind, and his ideas directly transcribed, turned out to be extremely insulting and xenophobic, whether he had intended so or not. With his background of being from a family pursued by the 3rd Reich themselves, this is all puzzling, but also needs to be seen as a sign of cultural isolation and a certain "innocence" when dealing with people of other skin colour and appearance. Whether it is the now frowned upon use of the word "n*gro", or depicting a particular Chinese family as being the size of little dolls, the whole story of Jim Button (the black baby found in a basket, who is then raised by the handful of people on the small island, and who becomes friend and apprentice of Lucas, the locomotive engineer) manages to step into one faux-pas after another.
The whole movie is indeed just like the puppet theatre show, but everything now being put fully on screen, with little left to imagine, the full onslaught of anachronistic views is embarrassing.
I have that DVD in my shelf, and I ended up cringing through it all in pain, just to finish it.
This is where the good part ends, because Michael Ende's story has too many flaws from a mind with a narrow imagination. This is a remake from a puppet show, that should have never been made. Prize winner many years ago or not, his stories are aging very badly.
After seeing the actually very faithful remake of Jim Button (Jim Knopf, an black orphan infant left on a small island in a basket) as a life action movie, the generally fondly remembered and beloved German "Augsburer Puppenkiste" puppet performance on TV from the early 70s was far superior.
It turns out, in a puppet theatre, so much was left to the viewer's imagination, one did not always imagine the scene as it was actually written. The author Michael Ende was of a strange mind, and his ideas directly transcribed, turned out to be extremely insulting and xenophobic, whether he had intended so or not. With his background of being from a family pursued by the 3rd Reich themselves, this is all puzzling, but also needs to be seen as a sign of cultural isolation and a certain "innocence" when dealing with people of other skin colour and appearance. Whether it is the now frowned upon use of the word "n*gro", or depicting a particular Chinese family as being the size of little dolls, the whole story of Jim Button (the black baby found in a basket, who is then raised by the handful of people on the small island, and who becomes friend and apprentice of Lucas, the locomotive engineer) manages to step into one faux-pas after another.
The whole movie is indeed just like the puppet theatre show, but everything now being put fully on screen, with little left to imagine, the full onslaught of anachronistic views is embarrassing.
I have that DVD in my shelf, and I ended up cringing through it all in pain, just to finish it.