Fantasia (1940)

There are times when you just find it hard to find the right words to express something. Seriously… How can you express Mona Lisa’s mysterious smile in words or tell a blind guy what Red color looks like? Walt Disney’s classic of sight and sound falls comes under this category. Made in 1940, this film was groundbreaking in its animation style back then. Even after more than 70 years, the film’s power has not lessened. This is an art film where Disney artists came up with their own sights and images for the ‘music’ that’s playing in the background. There are six main animated segments, accompanied by classic music and Deems Taylor plays the host who presents these segments before their commencement. When he’s done, we see Conductor Leopold Stokowski’s figure, bathed in brilliant splashes of colour, guiding the beautiful music played by The Philadelphia Orchestra. The film fades and the images flow in the screen, dancing to the beautiful music.

Grandiose, but never pretentious, Fantasia is a true work of art. The artists exploit their freewill of interpreting classic works of Western music and the result is as thrilling as a roller coaster ride. Sometimes these segments have a definite story. Sometimes, there’s no definite plot but it does contain a series of definite, abstract images. And then there’s the kind where music exists for its own sake. As Fantasia is divided in six main segments, I’ll go through each and every one giving a brief description about them and what I felt about them. This is a difficult task, yes, especially when you are trying to describe the emotional effect the astounding marriage of sight and sound had on you. But this amateur reviewer will try his best. And I won’t be covering everything, as I want many things to come as an absolute surprise to you.

Here we go…

1st Segment: The Nutcracker Suite, Op. 71a

In this beautiful segment, we witness the changing seasons brought about by the magical fairies. This segment presents a variety of dances, performed by various ‘elements’ of the Mother Nature as the seasons change… This is one of my least favorite segments yet the animation is jaw-droppingly (Is that a word?) powerful and one of the most complex I have ever seen in any hand-drawn animated film. This is a segment that takes place in a forest, on a river and even underwater. My God, they even animated the ripples that the fish, while swimming, produce! We see a spider’s web getting covered in dew drops as the magical fairies dance about it while the celesta plays silently in the score. The beautiful harp plays along as the leaves dry up and fall in a poetic way. We see the fish dancing with their beautiful long fins as the violins play lazily in a dreamlike manner. We see the brilliant ballet of the fairies in the end as they cover everything in frost to welcome the winter. The frost crystals shown in this last part looks unbelievably 3D-ish! This is a very meticulously detailed segment where imagination is allowed to flow freely. Attention has also been given to the facial expressions of the fairies like one fairy looks a bit bored as she might be tired of these daily chores!

What a beautiful interpretation of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker Suite. Although, some of the ‘dances’ in this sequence were a bit unappealing to me, it was still a wonderful watch, thanks to the ahead-of-its-time animation.

3.5/5

2nd Segment: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice

This is one of the most iconic scenes in cinema and it stars… Mickey Mouse! This is a definite parabolic segment based on Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s poem. It’s the story of an apprentice (Mickey Mouse) who tries to attempt a few of his master’s magic tricks but doesn’t know how to use them! One day, he’s ordered to carry water to fill a cauldron. When the master goes away, he uses magic to make the broomstick carry water for him. But he doesn't know the counter spell to stop it! A very thought-provoking story that also entertains. Mickey’s child-like performance as he plays with powers beyond him is immaculately captured through hand-drawn animation. The music composition done by Paul Dukas truly was a proper selection for this segment as it beautifully portrays the emotions of naughtiness, guilt and that feeling of awe when you try out something new.

I really enjoyed this part. And it has no dialog!

4.5/5

3rd Segment: Rite of Spring

According to our host, Composer Igor Stravinsky had created the score in order to depict the beginning of life forms on Earth, how some of them evolved into Dinosaurs and how they eventually died. The Disney animators bring this vision to life in this segment.

This is another extremely complex segment where we journey through the Milky Way, reaching Earth which is nothing but a big hot mass full of active volcanoes and storms. So many things happen at once, all of them ‘performing’ at the mercy of the gigantic score. The volcanoes roar… Hot yellow bubbles explode… The Earth breaks and volcanic rivers flow into a giant sea… Moments later, we witness life evolving in the seas…

Once again, the animation is grand in scale and, surprisingly, there’s total absence of sound effects. As promised, it’s just sound and images mixing together to re-create the events of evolution, the way science claims it had happened. This is a very powerful visceral experience.

4.5/5

4th Segment: The Pastoral Symphony

Ah… Now we have arrived at my favorite part of the film. The legendary Composer Ludwig van Beethoven’s score accompanies a gathering of mythical Greek creatures. Fauns, Centaurs, Cupids, Pegasus and many other creatures join in to party with Bacchus, the lord of wine. Later, the party is interrupted by a giant storm…

This segment is an explosion of colors. Imaginations of the artist run wild as they paint this scene with all the colors of the world and place the purest fruits, flowers in this scenario. To make the setting more wonderful, the art-direction adds heavily to the mythical aspect. And then the characters fill in the scene, captured with poetic mise en scene all performing once again to Beethoven’s beautiful score. This scene is so rich that rivers of wine fill the land (Literally) and the rainbow almost pours its colors on the entire setting. I can go on for ages in the process of describing this scene but I’ll save you the time and let you discover the well-engineered wonders of this segment. This part defines Heaven for me. Yes, this is what it looks like. Masterpiece.

5/5

5th Segment: Dance of the Hours

This is a comic ballet depicting: morning, afternoon, evening and finally night. A certain different groups of ‘performers’ dance to Composer Amilcare Ponchielli’s score, depicting different hours of the day. I’ll keep this a surprise as who the performers truly are. A comic sequence indeed but I personally found myself bored most of the time. This segment is just dance, dance and more dances. I’ll just say that the animators were ‘too’ imaginative in this scene and it would have helped if a few things were cut down. Still, it's worth watching this dreamy sequence.

3.5/5

6th Segment: Night on Bald Mountain and Ave Maria

Now you have reached the most serious part of Fantasia. This segment has two different pieces of music in it but when put together it forms a battle between the forces of good and evil. That’s how the animators interpreted it. This segment depicts the gathering of the forces of evil and restless spirits summoned by the powerful devil Chernabog. The evil forces perform a sort of dance macabre in front of the devil who admires them and toys with them. The grand score that plays here is Night on Bald Mountain (The segment does take place on a mountain) composed by Modest Mussorgsky. Once again, the animation here is bold, complex and full of impressive imagination. The way the devil summons the dead from the abandoned town, the way the dead come out of their graves, sometimes ghostly figures of knights and soldiers who possibly died in some war, is a sight to behold. The atmosphere is both melancholic and dark. The emotions are furthered intensified by the music…

And then… their terrible soiree is interrupted by a sound of a bell. Probably it’s a church bell. The devil and the forces of evil retreat as dawn slowly bring in warmth and hope. Franz Schubert’s iconic Ava Maria fills the air, coming from a group of people, supposedly Monks…

If the Pastoral segment depicts paradise, this final segment depicts our material universe. There is good and evil everywhere… but in the end it’s the good that always triumphs. The hour is darkest just before dawn…

My second favorite segment in Fantasia. Another flawless masterpiece.

5/5

Whew! So now we have almost arrived at the end of this huge review. I don’t know if I've become successful in expressing what Fantasia is about. But if I have, well and good. You see, art has so many different forms. Sometimes it has a definite meaning and sometimes it’s left for the viewer to decide what certain aspects actually depict and what they see in it. Fantasia is a grand and audacious art. It’s a visceral experience that simply exists to feast your senses and serve as a reminder that cinematic art has no bounds. Don’t worry, mate. This isn't something heavy or boring artsy-fartsy stuff. It’s pure cinema that is meant to be felt. Fantasia, for me, was like entering a child's imaginary world where all the stories that probably his parents told him come to life. But Fantasia IS a dream world and what a stunning dream it is!

Although I wasn’t impressed by few of it’s segments, the experience as a whole was unforgettable. Please don’t miss it…

4.4/5