FAIRYTALE: A TRUE STORY
Dominic Ow
Director: Charles Sturridge
Screenplay: Albert Ash (story) & Tom McLoughlin (story) and Ernie Contreras (story) Ernie Contreras
Produced by: Paramount Pictures
Production Company: Mandalay Entertainment
Distribution Company: Sony Pictures Entertainment / TriStar Pictures
Cast: Florence Hoath (Elsie Wright), Elizabeth Earl (II) (Frances Griffiths), Paul McGann (Arthur Wright), Phoebe Nicholls (Polly Wright), Peter O'Toole (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), Harvey Keitel (Harry Houdini), Bill Nighy (E.L. Gardner), Bob Peck (I) (Harr y Briggs), Tim McInnerny
Running Time: 99 min
Rating: ***
Official website: www.fairytalemovie.comI tried to dig deep into the recesses of my repressed ID to find a movie title more insipid. Of course my psychoanalysis yielded none. Bad movie titles, like the uninspired films they market, are often flushed out of the subconscious long before the final credits. FAIRYTALE: A TRUE STORY, despite its seemingly unenthusiastic title, may be one film that will linger in your subconsciousness.
Innocuous as it is, the film's title is a clever one. In an oxymoron, the title suggests the thematic struggle between fiction and fact, illusion and realism, fairytales and true stories. FAIRYTALE: A TRUE STORY is a respectable examination of the grey no man's land between the antithetical extremes of fantasy and verity, a ground no doubt well-trodden by such as A Midsummer's Night Dream and Alice in Wonderland.
The plot's skeletal frame is transparent. Two young girls, Frances and Elsie, discover and photograph Peter Pan-like fairies in their backyard. The rest of the story details how people came to believe in the girls' sightings and in the existence of the supernatural. Those in need of convincing are Elsie's parents, renowned Theosophist E.L Gardner (Bill Nighy),
creator of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Peter O'Toole), legendary escape-artist/illusionist, Harry Houdini (Harvey Kietel) and we,the malleable audience, ever willing to suspend our disbelief.
The film's characters are not accidental tourists in an unlikely coincidence. Each has been carefully chosen by writer Ernie Contreras for what they symbolize. The children contrasted with their parents, represent the simple struggle between the innocent, vulnerable eye of childhood and the distrustful, experienced outlook of adults. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, as the creator of the fictional legend Sherlock Holmes, is a symbol of contrasts himself - Sherlock Holmes, the investigator of objective fact, is but a willing subjective creation of Sir Arthur. Harry Houdini, the master of illusion, is quick to reveal in the film, that his art is a function of science and not magic. And as each character succumbs to the charm of the fairies, we too are drawn into the very real world of fairies.
And it is a world of fairy verisimilitude that director Charles Sturridge unabashedly has fashioned. The camera of director of photography Michael Coulter (SENSE AND SENSIBILITY) alternately hovers at the level of the children and darts into the sky with fairy-like bird's eye views. The fairies Visual Effects Supervisor Tim Webber has moulded appear with life-like clarity and features. Composer Zbigniew Preisner (Blue, Red and White) unleashes overwrought themes at critical moments. It is the world of the fairies that seem real compared to the backdrop of the First World War that the story is set in. It is as though Sturridge was saying, believe, there is no alternative.
Perhaps Sturridge is drawing our attention to film as medium bridging fantasy and realism - a metaphor (but only a metaphor) of life itself. Like the audience who wildly applauds a crude stage production of Peter Pan at the start of the film, we too have been successfully manipulated by the techniques of the filmmakers to suspend our disbelief.
The filmmakers - director Charles Sturridge, producers Wendy Finerman and Bruce Davey of Braveheart fame, may be accused to have crafted a children's movie about fairies and magic. The accusation, while it holds some salt (so you CAN bring your kids), neglects the subtlety and complexity with which the film considers the nature of illusion and realism, fact and fiction.
For those of you who may resist the wiles of the filmmakers, and catch yourself suspending your disbelief, I offer Puck's epilogue to A Midsummer's Night Dream:
If we shadows have offended, Think but this, and all is mended: That you have but slumb'red here, While these visions did appear.But trust me, FAIRYTALE: A TRUE STORY will be there in your memory the next time you need to think of an example of a good film with a prosaic title.
The Flying Inkpot's Rating System
* Wait for the TV2 broadcast.
** A little creaky, but still better than staying at home with Gotcha!
*** Pretty good, bring a friend.
**** Amazing, potent stuff.
***** Perfection. See it twice.
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