I must have watched Karel Zeman's The Fabulous Baron Munchausen a year ago. I loved this movie for its sense of wonder and use of colors together with silhouettes. But I didn't get to watch another Zeman movie until now.
Krabat reinforces my belief that Karel Zeman is one of cinema's lost visionaries. In the two movies I saw he showed a mind capable of inventing situations full excitement, humor and magic. His world belonged to the old fairy tales, early science fiction writers like Cyrano de Bergerac (a character in Munchausen), Jules Verne and writers of tall-tales like the Baron himself. I think it's this love for the past that makes his word so timeless; like a bedtime fairytale that one never tires of hearing.
In Krabat we meet an orphan boy traveling by his own, enjoying his freedom and opportunity to find adventures. But with the coming of Winter he needs shelter. One night, sleeping in a barn he's summoned by a raven to a mill. There he meets a man who offers him a job as apprentice there. Of course this man is actually a sorcerer who also wants to teach his black magic. Krabat soon discovers he's just one of the many boys at the mill.
Many times Krabat tries to run away, but the sorcerer always foils his plans. Furthermore, Krabat is anxious that the day will come when the sorcerer will challenge him to a duel. Every winter a boy fights the sorcerer, and Krabat is weary of seeing his friends die. Plus he has discovered love in a peasant girl in a nearby village.
This is a clear and simple good vs. evil story, fueled by the power of love. Imagination and suspense carry on the narrative. One is always on edge when the sorcerer and another boy fight, or when Krabat breaks into his chamber to read from his magic book. And we're always waiting for the sorcerer's new transformation: he appears under many guises - snake, crow, wild boar, cat - and is nearly omnipresent.
as well as the style of animation. How to explain it? It looks like woodcuts, it doesn't have the fluidity of hand-drawn animation. And yet this strangeness makes it alluring, different from anything else we know today of animation.
Although I love Pixar, I regret that its style has come to dominate the public's conception of animation, much like Disney did before Pixar. It's when watching a movie like Krabat that one remembers what a rich world animation is, how many styles it can have and it's virtually limitless. Krabat is not just a good animated movie, but it also serves to show that animation can follow other ways.
Krabat reinforces my belief that Karel Zeman is one of cinema's lost visionaries. In the two movies I saw he showed a mind capable of inventing situations full excitement, humor and magic. His world belonged to the old fairy tales, early science fiction writers like Cyrano de Bergerac (a character in Munchausen), Jules Verne and writers of tall-tales like the Baron himself. I think it's this love for the past that makes his word so timeless; like a bedtime fairytale that one never tires of hearing.
In Krabat we meet an orphan boy traveling by his own, enjoying his freedom and opportunity to find adventures. But with the coming of Winter he needs shelter. One night, sleeping in a barn he's summoned by a raven to a mill. There he meets a man who offers him a job as apprentice there. Of course this man is actually a sorcerer who also wants to teach his black magic. Krabat soon discovers he's just one of the many boys at the mill.
Many times Krabat tries to run away, but the sorcerer always foils his plans. Furthermore, Krabat is anxious that the day will come when the sorcerer will challenge him to a duel. Every winter a boy fights the sorcerer, and Krabat is weary of seeing his friends die. Plus he has discovered love in a peasant girl in a nearby village.
This is a clear and simple good vs. evil story, fueled by the power of love. Imagination and suspense carry on the narrative. One is always on edge when the sorcerer and another boy fight, or when Krabat breaks into his chamber to read from his magic book. And we're always waiting for the sorcerer's new transformation: he appears under many guises - snake, crow, wild boar, cat - and is nearly omnipresent.
as well as the style of animation. How to explain it? It looks like woodcuts, it doesn't have the fluidity of hand-drawn animation. And yet this strangeness makes it alluring, different from anything else we know today of animation.
Although I love Pixar, I regret that its style has come to dominate the public's conception of animation, much like Disney did before Pixar. It's when watching a movie like Krabat that one remembers what a rich world animation is, how many styles it can have and it's virtually limitless. Krabat is not just a good animated movie, but it also serves to show that animation can follow other ways.
