It is
not often that an animated film is as thematically rich, filled with
fully-rounded characters and as frankly moving as Rise of the Guardians, opening today and based on William Joyce’s Guardians of Childhood
series. While many (if not most)
animated films at least achieve a level of sentiment through forced or cheaply
manipulative means, Rise presents a level of richness and complexity that is seldom
found even in today’s adult film fare.
Rise presents issues of love and loss, life and death, the persistence
of memory, the power of belief and the measure of identity; for all of its high
spirits and freewheeling shenanigans, there is also a surprising vein of
melancholy. It is a film not to be
missed, one that can be savored by both children and adults alike, albeit for
different reasons.
The
Guardians – both the books and film – represent a dramatic change in Joyce’s
oeuvre. Over the past decades the scope
of his stories and the emotional weight of his work have increased in heft and
urgency. Joyce’s early work was often
pitched in a minor key – problems, when they existed at all, were usually
expelled by an afternoon with friends or by dancing the hokey pokey. However, life and time have left their mark
on the artist, and he has become engaged with larger scale questions, such as
the nature of sorrow, the pursuit of happiness and their balance in the lives
of both children and adults.
If this
sounds weighty for a children’s movie, you haven’t been paying attention. Joyce’s long-term concern has always been the
very alchemy of happiness, how it functions and how it survives. His is a unique contemporary voice in that he
is devoid of irony, sweet in his sincerity, delighted by his passions and fueled
by its sense of wonder.
Rise of
the Guardians is an independent entity from Joyce’s current, ongoing Guardians
of Childhood series. The book chronicles
how the great figures of children’s folklore – Santa Claus, the Easter
Bunny, Tooth Fairy, and Sandman, among others – band together
under the guidance of the Man in the
Moon to protect the children of the Earth.
Rise takes place several hundreds of years after the book series, with
the Guardians already in place and working as a (somewhat argumentative) team.
Rise is
told from the point of view of a new character, Jack Frost, the spirit of winter, who is recruited by the Guardians
to join their number in a renewed battled against Pitch – also known as the Boogeyman. It can be regarded as the final origin story
for the Guardians, and the starting point for a series of animated
adventures. (One hopes.) The screenplay, by David Lindsay-Abaire, skillfully mixes comedy and pathos, as well
as action scenes and intimate moments that linger in the memory.
Rise
boasts a charming score by Alexandre
Desplat, and a closing song performed by soprano Renee Fleming. Already, the
filmmakers win points for creating an animated fantasy that does not include
jarring (and ugly) rap and hip hop numbers, fart jokes and puerile pop cultural
references. In an era of animated films
that date badly scant months after they are released, Rise will be entertaining
children for decades to come.
Rise
features a host of spectacular voice performances, starting with Alec Baldwin as Santa Claus. Baldwin plays the jolly old elf with a heavy
Russian accent (as described by Joyce in the books), and seems to be having so
much fun, one wonders if he paid Dreamworks in order to do it. In what is perhaps a nod to his role as
announcer for the New York Philharmonic
on WNYC, he often uses the names of
Russian composers instead of expletives – most wonderfully thundering “Rimsky Korsakov!”
when falling down.
Hugh Jackman is an amusing, brawling Easter
Bunny – a significant change of the character from Joyce’s books. Where Joyce presents the Bunny as something
of a furry Mr. Spock, Jackman’s
Bunny is a smart-talking Australian tough guy in constant competition against
Baldwin’s Santa. Their backbiting
rivalry is one of the chief joys of the film.
Isla Fisher gives voice to the Tooth Fairy, a
role written as sweeter and less formidable than her book counterpart. This works wonderfully well in the context of
the film, her warm accessibility balances the more antic vocalizations of
Baldwin and Jackman.
However,
the two finest performances in the film belong to Chris Pine as Jack Frost and Jude
Law as Pitch. Pine plays Frost with
both an edgy insouciance and a wounded melancholy. Frost is the spirit of winter, but has no
memory of his past or sense of purpose.
Worse still, unlike other Guardians, people cannot see him. Because children do not believe in him with
the same fever as Santa or the Bunny, he is incorporeal and invisible. There is a moment about midway through the
film when he can be seen by a child for the first time that had your
correspondent blubbering into coat sleeve – it’s a fine performance that is
beautifully animated.
Law as
Pitch comes very close to stealing the film – it is simply the best vocal
performance in an animated film since Peter
O’Toole in Ratatouille. Law shows remarkable vocal range – sinister,
seductive, anguished and afraid. The
filmmakers also changed the visual conception of Pitch from that of the novels
for the better: he is quite baroque in Joyce’s books, and in the film he is long and sleek in a
flowing robe. Horse-faced with tiny, yet
evil looking teeth and a passel of evil stallions (literally night-mares),
Pitch is a remarkable creation.
Of
course, there are quibbles. Rise is
directed with energy by Peter Ramsey,
but one cannot help but think that under the baton of someone like Brad Bird, Andrew Stanton or Steven
Spielberg, what now glows would actually shimmer. The action is, to an aged viewer like myself, sometimes
too frenetic by half, and I wish that the art direction mirrored Joyce’s
earlier books (like his masterful Santa
Calls), but these are all minor carps.
Perhaps
the most fascinating thing about the film is the Frost-Pitch duality. Both suffer the same problem: they are
largely invisible because fewer and fewer children believe in them. While Frost is wounded by this, his natural
inclination is to meet the situation with a sense of fun; Pitch to terrify
children into belief. What Lindsay-Abaire’s
screenplay does so beautifully is realize that the existential pain is nearly
the same for both. In his monologues,
Pitch is nearly as sympathetic as he is menacing, and Law manages to milk that
emotional current beautifully.
Finally,
the film also seems to be an assertion of the fundamental tenant of Joyce’s
overarching philosophy: that high spirits, a sense of fun and a touch of
panache is enough to keep even the darkest spirits at bay. Let’s hope he’s right.
Rise of
the Guardians is the perfect holiday film and comes highly recommended.
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