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So
I've finally made it to the Omni-Theatre at the Singapore Science
Centre to catch the updated version of Fantasia for the,
uh, zeroes ('00s). Having seen the original Fantasia previously
on the big screen, and several times more on video, this is something
which, ever since the earliest hints and rumours began, I've been
waiting for some time.
First,
I have to say that Mr Disney's original idea of an animated entertainment
to classical music was (and still is) a good one. It is an ingenious
way to introduce audiences (kids and adults alike) to classical
music - which is not just good for handphone and elevator transcriptions.
I don't know about the IMAX format, though; this means that fewer
audiences might watch it than it would otherwise attract at downtown
cineplexes.
That
said, the reality of what happens when too young kids, with best-intentioned
parents, are brought into the auditorium and made to sit through
"uninteresting" classical music is: they cry, they whine, they talk
loudly, and their parents will give them a blow-by-blow narrative
of what's going on on the screen oblivious of everyone else around
them (it happened to me in my screening). In general, behaving like
they were the only ones watching and ruining the picture for everyone
else. You can't win'em all, I suppose.
 Fantasia
2000 is very much like the original: an anthology of eight vignettes,
designed and animated by different teams of Disney animators and
set to adaptations of classical music. Some of these are stories
set to music, while others vary from plotless cartoons to the purely
abstract.
Between
each segment, Disney has signed on a slew of American celebrities
to introduce the works: some of these are artistes who have been
long associated with Disney, such as the rotund basso of
James Earl Jones who voiced King Mufasa (The Lion King) and
the matronly Angela Lansbury aka Mrs Potts (Beauty and the Beast).
It
gets to a point where the audience is overkilled with all the celebrity
names. For the most part, I accept that celebrity hard-sell in this
day and age (or indeed any day and age) is inescapable, although
when people look back on this fifty years from now, the obsessive
use of bankable celebrity names from this age will inevitably date-stamp
this slice of American pop culture: "Who were those guys,
anyway ?"
Personally,
I couldn't bother so much all this icing than the actual content
of this musical confection. Although for the life of me, and it
only happened this once, I just couldn't understand the pie-in-the-face,
pander-to-kids antics of Steve Martin, who introduced the truncated
first movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony with overblown
adjectives, bad self-deprecating jokes and a great deal of
hyperbole that was impossible to swallow.
But
the music, once it starts, isn't half bad. This work, kicking off
the entire movie, was visualized as an abstract rendition of flashes
of lighting amidst pastel clouds and colours; later, dancing shapes
which involuntarily transform into stylized dancing butterflies
comprising two flapping triangles and a horde of dark anti-heroic
triangles which engulfs everything.
The
unschooled audience must have wondered what they had gotten themselves
in for. Well, suffice to say that the abstract in art does not automatically
and immediately satisfy its viewers with obvious interpretations
and resolutions; it sometimes requires some imagination and interaction
from the beholder as well.
 But
not so for the rest of the program. The next work, Respighi's Pines
of Rome, may at first seem a curious choice for inclusion in
this anthology. Long regarded a minor composer in the pantheon of
great masters, it is perhaps too easy to overlook Respighi as one
of the best orchestrators in the business (even if he was pretty
average in every other department). But if a one-work wonder like
Dukas can get his ten-minutes of fame (see below), wither Respighi
?
The
music, performed by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra under James Levine
(except Rhapsody in Blue, which was conducted by Bruce Broughton),
is electric, as was the animation. As this segment was introduced:
"When the animators heard this music, they thought of something
else entirely." It certainly wasn't a row of trees along a road,
and I won't spoil the surprise for you here by spelling it out,
but the visualization of this music is something that has
to be watched on a big screen. It was, in every sense of the word,
awesome.
The
third work, Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, was rendered to
animation inspired by the caricatures of Alf Hirschfeld. It tells
the story of "a day in the life of" a steel worker aspiring to be
a jazz drummer, an unemployed man, a man married to money and a
chaperoned child forcibly separated from her parents by extra-mural
pursuits (ballet classes, art lessons, etc), set in post-Depression
1930s New York.
Beginning
with the legato ascending clarinet represented by a line
sketching out a silhouette of the city skyline, each of the four
stories are then cleverly juxtaposed and gradually unfolded to Gershwin's
rollicking music. The ending is predictably trite, but then this
is Disney, where everything always ends well.
No
less attractive (and my personal favourite of the eight vignettes)
is the first-movement allegro of Shostakovich's Piano
Concerto No.2. This is pungent neoclassical music, but surprisingly
pulled off very well against Hans Christian Anderson's story of
The Steadfast Tin Soldier.
This
is a charming little tale of a defective toy soldier, missing one
leg, who falls in love with a ballerina (which he initially mistakes
her attitude position for being, like himself, a one-legged
aberration). He bravely fights an evil Jack-in-the-box (who also
has an eye for the girl), survives a sequence of trials in the undercity
sewers, before finally prevailing against all adversity to win her
love.
This
story is scripted and rendered so aptly that one might be even forgiven
for thinking that the music had been written to fit the action,
and not vice versa. This is also one of the few all-CGI sequences
in the movie and indeed, is a very effective vehicle to showcase
how far the state has come in the art of computer-generated imagery.
 It
comes as no great surprise that Saint-Saëns' Carnival of
the Animals makes an appearance as well. This sequence draws
on the final movement of the Carnival and is also the shortest
sequence in the entire movie. It also drew the most laughter from
the juvenile audience: a short plotless skit based on five dancing
flamingoes plus one maverick with a yo-yo (yet another instance
of pop-kitsch Americania).
Not
surprisingly (perhaps), the magical duo of Penn and Teller appeared
to introduce the segment reprised from the original Fantasia,
the ubiquitous, poster-boy Sorcerer's Apprentice by Paul
Dukas. This choice of segment was a savvy one, since the majority
of audiences might not have seen it in its entirely before. That
said, watching the movie again on an oversized screen with all the
original flaws magnified as well as those introduced by aging didn't
help, not even after extensive and painstaking film restoration.
The scratchy soundtrack was the original Stokowski/Philadelphia
Orchestra performance.
I
suppose it was coming: a Disney icon, Donald Duck (and his mate
Daisy) turn up in the Biblical tale of Noah's Ark, set to Elgar's
Pomp and Circumstance Marches 1 to 4 which have been woven
into a continuous melody. There are shades of The Lion King
here, with hordes of animals being rounded up in pairs to board
Noah's boat before the great deluge. This setting takes place over
a parallel story arc in which Donald and Daisy being separated from
each other in the chaos of animals boarding the ark, and each thinking
that the other had (literally) missed the boat and perished in the
flood.
It
is actually a delightful story, but what ruined it for me was the
excessive ornamentation to Elgar's grand music. Some "enchancements"
were understandable, such as a brace of twittering flutes added
on top of the procession from March No.1 to accompany birds on screen,
but other additions were quite - well, tasteless: a wordless choir
stuck in at the ending as the animals disembark from the ark in
a great procession plus a solo descant soprano soaring above
it all that was unartistic and gratuitous.
While
I understand that the music has to be rearranged for length (twelve
minutes of Beethoven's Sixth in the original Fantasia,
for example), there should be some modicum of good taste and sensibility
as well. On the face of it, I can't see how adding that soprano
(voiced by Kathleen Battle) helped, since Elgar's Pomp and Circumstance
stands very well on its own without modern colourations elbowing
in on it.
The
final sequence, based on Stravinsky's exciting Firebird Suite
of 1919, is another abstract fantasy tale about a wood sprite, an
elk and a fire demon. There is more than just a hint of Japanese
animé influence in this sequence, which tells of a wood sprite
reflowering a wood rousing from winter, only to be scorched to ashes
by an inadvertantly awakened fire demon.
For
a moment there I thought the baddie from Night on Bald Mountain
in the original Fantasia had returned for a cameo. The scenes
of volcanic destruction and burning woodlands had the kids in paroxysms
of near-tears and frightful wails, although they calmed down somewhat
after the graphic conflagration was over and the wood sprite, aided
by her friend the elk, magically transformed the ashes back into
a bountiful wood. One just hopes they (the kids) were not too badly
traumatized.
Having
been bored to tears at a recent live concert performances where
an orchestra accompanied a cartoon projected on a screen, the importance
of the marriage between music and action cannot be understated.
To be honest, I didn't notice the quality of the musical performance
per se - only in spots where they were very good (as in the
Respighi and Shostakovich) or very bad ("enhanced"
Elgar) as much as absorbing everything as a holistic experience.
All
in all, Fantasia 2000 is essentially a good product. The
orchestral visuals (by veteran effects company Rhythm and Hues)
in the introductory sequences were amazing, very much in the art
deco style of the first Fantasia. It is impossible that everything
in a work of this scope would please everyone, but it was for me
something that didn't disappoint and an afternoon well spent.
BENJAMIN
CHEE wonders how Disney really intended to animate Jaromir
Weinberger's Schwanda the Bagpiper. (Long story, watch the
movie.).
810:
16.01.2001
©Benjamin Chee
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