Jan 17, 2005 11:51 AM
1733 Views
(Updated Jan 17, 2005 01:21 PM)
National Geographic recently conducted a photographic competition. There is one particular photograph (which won a Merit Award) that kept on recurring in my mind as I reclined in my seat while watching Robert Zemeckis? The Polar Express.
The photo depicted a group of men in an airport. Most of them were operating their mobile phones (texting or attending to calls), while a huge gap yawned between all of them. So, technology has actually drifted us apart while attempting to bring us together.
It is an irony similar to this one that resides deep in the heart of this wondrous joy ride of a movie. Based on Chris van Allsburg?s children?s? book of the same name it raises some very pertinent, albeit dated, issues which are universal in their scope and hence the film touches hearts the world over.
Zemeckis, according to me, is one of the most versatile filmmakers of our times. His filmography includes adventure (Romancing the Stone), animation (Who Framed Roger Rabbit), sci-fi (Back to the Future), drama (Forrest Gump, Castaway) and horror (What Lies Beneath) among others. The only other director with a repertoire as myriad as this, to my mind, was the great Stanley Kubrick.
What is fascinating about Zemeckis is his grasp of both the storytelling as well as the technological aspects of filmmaking. Many of his films have acted as the harbinger of newer avenues of technology in Hollywood, be it compositing in Forrest Gump (remember Gump shaking hands with Kennedy?) or motion capture in his most recent offering ? The Polar Express.
In its essence, the film is about faith, belief and trust. With Christmas as a background it has woven a tale that has a much broader latitude and an inherent message that is disconcerting, if not alarming. The story in a nutshell deals with a boy who does not believe in Santa or the spirit of Christmas.
On Christmas Eve, while his suspicions that Santa is nothing but a figment of adults? imaginations get fortified, a magical experience occurs in his life. A train (the eponymous Polar Express) chug-chugs in front of his home and takes him on an adventure of a lifetime to the North Pole to meet Santa and his elves. While discovering Santa, he finds himself and understands the meaning of life in general.
There are several child characters in the film. And in each, Zemeckis has portrayed a trait that many children all over the world suffer from ? doubtfulness, lack of confidence, shyness, insecurity, loneliness and the all-pervasive feeling of not belonging. The train journey itself is an allegory of self-discovery.
The Polar Express plunges, zips, skittles, careens, stops and swerves. Our hero boy is skeptical, suspicious, unconvinced, dubious and incredulous. Then he starts believing. He starts believing only when he has seen the unbelievable.
There are moments in almost all of Zemeckis? films when the spectator is delighted with a visual feast that takes the breath away. There was the prancing in the wind feather in Forrest Gump, here there is an amazing journey of a fluttering train ticket. But all special effects aside, this film is about life and the life of children, to be precise. Hence, our hero boy learns as much from the train ride that takes him to elf-land as he learns from his fellow travelers, mainly from an Afro-American girl (the spirit of joie-de-vivre and decisiveness) and a shy kid (the true meaning of happiness and friendship).
Today's children have at their disposal a host of material amenities. However, one factor that is missing is imagination. Thanks to the Harry Potter franchise and films like The Polar Express; which are reinstating the role that imagination plays in the lives of children. It is films like these that restore our faith in the fun that one has when one allows one's imagination to have a free rein.
In some ways Zemeckis has come full-circle from his 1988 eye-popper of a film Who Framed Roger Rabbit. In it he separated animation from the human actors (repeated later in films such as Space Jam), while here he has merged them beautifully together. This very feature of completion is demonstrated in the fact that the film, too, comes full-circle. It begins its journey with the whistle and ringing of bells of the Polar Express. It ends with the ringing of another kind of a bell ? a gift from Santa, and the most precious gift of all, faith.
