Fantasia

Made: 1940

Director: Walt Disney

Producer: Walt Disney

"Perhaps Bach and Beethoven are strange bedfellows for Mickey Mouse, but it's all been a lot of fun." - Walt Disney

               It is so ingrained in our minds now that Animation is a part of life, it is strange to think of a day where full length animation movies did not exist. Even stranger to think of a time where it seemed so new and so full of possibilities that every movie was a leap forward of some kind. Fantasia was in this first crop of Disney movies in the 1930's and 1940's that seemed to create something new and its experiments continue to perplex and amaze to this day. It's 7 animated segments, each set to a different classical music piece, pushed the form of what could be shown in a movie and the way it should be presented. It is perhaps, beyond being an amazing work of animation, one of the best arguments for music as a "universal language". Anyone can simply watch this movie and understand it in the same way.

               As a child I watched Fantasia and I loved some of it and thought the rest of it was a bunch of boring, formless noise. Classical music by itself did not interest me at the time, and I just thought "bring on the pictures!" Some guy at the beginning of the movie announcing the rules of the movie was not very interesting to me, I just wanted to see Mickey Mouse and the endless broomsticks fight it out with magic. To rewatch it throughout the years is very interesting, and the open experiment it tries to accomplish is beyond something today's mainstream audience would have patience for. Using classical music artists from hundreds of years before as the blueprint for animation sound painting is really the goal of this movie - albeit done on a huge scale and a huge budget. It is still a bold movie to watch though, not conventional in any way with a straight narrative, the only stories are animation brought to life by classical artists. New animation, with images sometimes cute and child oriented but sometimes truly horrifying and grandiose.

               Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" is the first great flight of imagination. From oriental mushrooms dancing in Busby Berkley like shapes to underwater fish that sparkle endlessly, the music does create images that ebb and flow with life. The announcer proceeds the piece by saying it was the composer's least favorite piece he ever wrote, but the one that people responded to the most. That could mean many things: does the public know better than the composer himself which piece of his are good? If so, is it still an honor to make the beautiful slides of animation to a piece that the actual composer grew to hate? A misrepresentation of a person done over time just because it’s his most popular piece? These are the kinds of speculations they obviously want us to think about, along with the dancing symmetrical plants.

               "The Sorcerer's Apprentice" is the next piece, as we are instructed by the composer that the music was written after the story this time, so it was music made to go along with the story not just random animation inspired by a music. As the most accessible part of Fantasia, Paul Dukas' song is the centerpiece of the film. It is a beautiful piece of animation, probably never equaled to this day. The walking broomsticks, whirlpools of water, and Mickey Mouse's interpretation of humanity's laziness is easily relatable and echoed throughout works to this day. The broomsticks could be slaves, they could be robots, they could be clones, the magician could be a boss, could be the government, could be a deity. I could watch it every day and never get tired of it.

               "The Rite of Spring" by Igor Stravinsky basically recreates the formation of the world as we know it since The Big Bang. Stravinsky has said he wanted the piece of music to relate to the primitive or beginning of humanity, and be as close to the earth as you could get. Images reflected in this piece of animation would go on to influence such far reaching movies as 2001: a Space Odyssey or The Tree of Life in their depiction of the universe. At some point, the line between "animation" and "special effects" becomes blurred. In Fantasia, they are now the same thing. Other pieces continue to use creative animation to reflect the classical music pieces, effective ones include Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours" with a skinny alligator and fat hippo; Franz Schubert's "Ave Maria" with holy candles walking out of the depths to haven; Beethoven's "Pastoral Symphony" gives us the centaurs and their girlfriends, the centauretts! A favorite of mine is "Night on Bald Mountain" by Modeste Moussorgsky, with its depiction of pure evil as a satanic figure on a mountain where souls are thrown down to hellfire and froced to dance. There is even a sequence that just plays each instrument of the orchestra as visual sound effects, the kind of thing we see every day now on our car radios or computers. There couple of later pieces of animation in the second half of the movie (especially the Beethoven one) could be seen as too cutesy or superfluous for what the film is trying to say, and in a way i would agree. Zeus throwing thunderbolts at naked babies is a little out there.

               Fantasia was also the first film shown in stereophonic sound (surround sound). As talking had just become the fad about 10 years before hand, stereo is obviously now used in just about every movie without question, but for 1940 this was largely new. Few experiences in movie are as interesting as watching Fantasia on the big-screen with large speakers on each side (or if you're like me, a good set of headphones at home). Walt Disney was above all a pioneer in film directors, introducing a new kind of film director: animation director. He did not do this alone, but was the overseer for a vast array of people (over 1,000 artists from all over the world) that created his animation on paper and then moved it on to the screen. With Fantasia, more than any other movie he directed at the beginning of his career (Snow White and the Seven Dwarves, Pinocchio, Dumbo, Silly Symphonies) he created a new kind of motion picture, one that throws away traditional narrative and simply casts ideas in motion, inspired by music. Fantasia is actually an animated musical concert. Disney should receive credit among the greatest of film directors for making animated movies that could finally be taken as seriously as films created solely with cameras and actors.

               There will probably be a day in the future (if its not already here) that a new kind of Fantasia can come along, where computers can create animation to musical pieces simultaniously, a future where movies like Fantasia can be made in a day or a hour. But the original template is here, for what ever we choose to do. Music as a universal language: check. Also, animation for infinite possabiltites. Perfection is a hard thing to strive for when your reaching for the stars though. It's going to be a little meandering and a little sloppy. It's easy to forgive Fantasia's minor flaws because even in those tiny moments one can feel the ambition and tireless efforts at work. That human kind came together and celebrated, well...itself, in this way is a landmark achievement and a fantastic adventure for all ages.

P.S. - Fantasia 2000 is a sequel of sorts to the original. The Salvador Dali sketches and George Gershwin part have to be seen to be believed. Disney had intended Fantasia to be an ever evolving process where each couple of years there would be new music and new animation done, but because of the negative reception of the time he was unable to fund it or keep the idea going. He then decided to stick to more commercial ventures that could resonate with every day people......what a waste. Fantasia 2000 is not as good as the original, but hey, what is?