Tales From Earthsea (PG.)
Directed by Gozu Miyazaki.
Voices of Timothy Dalton, Willem Defoe, Matt Levin, Cheech Marin, Mariska Hargitay. Animation. 115 mins
In a summer of dark blockbusters – emo Spider-man, hormonal Harry Potter – here’s a fantasy film that is resolutely grey. If most of the movies filling the screens right now are offering the equivalent of a theme park holiday, Earthsea is a wet week rambling in Cumbria.
This adaptation of the Ursula K. Le Quin fantasy sequence (based mostly on the third book) comes from Japan’s prestigious Studio Ghibli but anyone expecting the bright, rich wonders of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle should stay away. This film has been entrusted to Miyazaki’s son Gozu and his debut work is uniquely unappealing mix of the po-faced solemnity of a Star Wars prequel and the drab lack of imagination of Eragon.
An epic array of characters and possibilities are set up in the opening five minutes: dragons battle in the skies, mystics mutter dark portents of doom and a noble king is murdered. And then all that is immediately forgotten. The narrative concentrates on a boy Arren and a wizard Sparrowhawk who team up for some kind of vague amble in pursuit of finding out what’s going on but end doing an interminable amount of farming.
The film is bleakly earnest. Its major theme is the need to accept death. The film seems to be burdened by the same weight of despair that most of the characters are labouring under.
Of course all this would be more bearable if the movie was dazzling to look at it but there’s a visual paucity. The various characters, all with milk bottle ankles, walk falteringly across horizons that seemed to have been taken from old painting-by-numbers efforts. If you didn’t know otherwise, you might guess it had been made in the 70s. There’s nothing to excite the eyes in this movie but plenty to deaden the other senses.
Directed by Gozu Miyazaki.
Voices of Timothy Dalton, Willem Defoe, Matt Levin, Cheech Marin, Mariska Hargitay. Animation. 115 mins
In a summer of dark blockbusters – emo Spider-man, hormonal Harry Potter – here’s a fantasy film that is resolutely grey. If most of the movies filling the screens right now are offering the equivalent of a theme park holiday, Earthsea is a wet week rambling in Cumbria.
This adaptation of the Ursula K. Le Quin fantasy sequence (based mostly on the third book) comes from Japan’s prestigious Studio Ghibli but anyone expecting the bright, rich wonders of Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle should stay away. This film has been entrusted to Miyazaki’s son Gozu and his debut work is uniquely unappealing mix of the po-faced solemnity of a Star Wars prequel and the drab lack of imagination of Eragon.
An epic array of characters and possibilities are set up in the opening five minutes: dragons battle in the skies, mystics mutter dark portents of doom and a noble king is murdered. And then all that is immediately forgotten. The narrative concentrates on a boy Arren and a wizard Sparrowhawk who team up for some kind of vague amble in pursuit of finding out what’s going on but end doing an interminable amount of farming.
The film is bleakly earnest. Its major theme is the need to accept death. The film seems to be burdened by the same weight of despair that most of the characters are labouring under.
Of course all this would be more bearable if the movie was dazzling to look at it but there’s a visual paucity. The various characters, all with milk bottle ankles, walk falteringly across horizons that seemed to have been taken from old painting-by-numbers efforts. If you didn’t know otherwise, you might guess it had been made in the 70s. There’s nothing to excite the eyes in this movie but plenty to deaden the other senses.
