By bryson saunders-beckles
FANTASIA WAS AN EXPERIMENTAL FILM DURING ITS TIME, WHICH WAS ORIGINALLY MEANT TO BE AN EXPERIMENT TO BOOST THE POPULARITY OF MICKEY MOUSE, BUT IS NOW KNOWN AS A DISNEY CLASSIC. -BRYSON SAUNDERS-BECKLES.
Music is one of the most diverse forms of expression in the world. It has been a key element in every culture in the world, with varying instrumental and cultural significance. Whether it’s used to express yourself, make money or enhance a video game or a movie, music is everywhere you look. Have you ever had moments when you heard a song and an image popped into your mind? Or you remembered a scene from a movie? Has sound ever become something that you could literally see in your mind? That is what Walt Disney’s 1941 film Fantasia is all about.
Fantasia is somewhat hard to describe because I’ve never seen anything like it before. The film has almost no dialogue. Instead, there’s an orchestra playing over eight hand-drawn animated scenes for eight different songs. The songs in order are: “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”, “The Nutcracker Suite”, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, “Rite of Spring”, “Meet the Soundtrack” (I’ll get to that later), “The Pastoral Symphony”, “Dance of the Hours”, and the final piece, “Night on Bald Mountain”.
Even the conductor for the film, Leopold Stokowski, admits that the film is more about the music and less about the stories. The stories were written after the music, and range from Mickey Mouse being a wizard who puts a spell on a mop that goes wrong, to the story of the dinosaurs from their birth to their extinction. It gets quite whimsical, of which I am a fan. The weirdness and the colors give it a really nice texture. You can almost touch the music and taste it in your mouth. However, there are moments in the film where it feels like it slows down a little too much, but like a bad stomach ache, it passes quickly. The film was really charming, too, including a shout-out to Soundtrack, the Soundtrack (yes, I know) who, Stokowski claims, is a rather meek individual who (based on the film) is actually really talented. The orchestra, the conductor, Soundtrack, and Mickey Mouse are the only real characters in the movie, and it feels more compact and complete because of that. I give this film a 8/10.
Fantasia is somewhat hard to describe because I’ve never seen anything like it before. The film has almost no dialogue. Instead, there’s an orchestra playing over eight hand-drawn animated scenes for eight different songs. The songs in order are: “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor”, “The Nutcracker Suite”, “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice”, “Rite of Spring”, “Meet the Soundtrack” (I’ll get to that later), “The Pastoral Symphony”, “Dance of the Hours”, and the final piece, “Night on Bald Mountain”.
Even the conductor for the film, Leopold Stokowski, admits that the film is more about the music and less about the stories. The stories were written after the music, and range from Mickey Mouse being a wizard who puts a spell on a mop that goes wrong, to the story of the dinosaurs from their birth to their extinction. It gets quite whimsical, of which I am a fan. The weirdness and the colors give it a really nice texture. You can almost touch the music and taste it in your mouth. However, there are moments in the film where it feels like it slows down a little too much, but like a bad stomach ache, it passes quickly. The film was really charming, too, including a shout-out to Soundtrack, the Soundtrack (yes, I know) who, Stokowski claims, is a rather meek individual who (based on the film) is actually really talented. The orchestra, the conductor, Soundtrack, and Mickey Mouse are the only real characters in the movie, and it feels more compact and complete because of that. I give this film a 8/10.
