Strings
Strings is, quite simply, beautiful. The film tells the tragic, operatic story of a young man thrust into both ultimate power and intense feelings of vengeance. His father is dead, his uncle is scheming, the former chief of the army wants a new body and the leader of a rebel populous has been smeared with the accusation of murder. The young man sets out into the wilderness with a trusted army....
Strings is, quite simply, beautiful. The film tells the tragic, operatic story of a young man thrust into both ultimate power and intense feelings of vengeance. His father is dead, his uncle is scheming, the former chief of the army wants a new body and the leader of a rebel populous has been smeared with the accusation of murder. The young man sets out into the wilderness with a trusted army general and friend. The young man seeks revenge. All he will find is betrayal, pain, love and- eventually- the truth. All this bleakness and misery makes for intense viewing. Yet, it is the animation rather than the story which draws attention to this film. The young warrior, the scheming uncle, the fragile sister and their ilk are puppets suspended on thin, elongated strings. In the flickering light of the electric storm which always seems to rain overhead in the universe of strings, these ropes of life look strong, sturdy and capable of surviving the full fury of the elements, war and plotting villains. In truth, the strings can all too easily become tangled, stretched and torn. One pull in the wrong direction, one misjudged movement fuelled by aggression and all is loss. Watch them dance, watch them fight, watch them slay and watch them fall- all of them manipulated by unseen hands belonging to unseen masters.
The film’s story incorporates and deploys all the elements of Greek tragedy, as it is the young son suddenly thrust into the limelight and responsibility of rule over his kingdom who brings on the tragic consequences of death, destruction and disaster. The film walks with Shakespeare’s Hamlet on one side and Tim Burton on the other. The vast array of magical and intriguing locations and the naivety of the protagonist echo A Nightmare Before Christmas and that film’s lead star Jack, The Pumpkin King. This is the film that causes grown men to cry at the death of a doll. The bleakness of the film was- at times- overplayed for effect and the absence of a joke or a poison-in-jest aside distracted from the brilliance of the underlying concept and threatened to force proceedings into a depressive rant about the state of the world. Also, nobody appeared to be quite sure why it had to rain all the time or why the puppets had to be drenched in water for most of their time on screen.
The picture and sound quality of the DVD release is superb throughout. The special features include a subtitled making-of documentary which introduces you to the animators, the puppet designers, the manic creative genius who first came up with the idea for the film and the cast of hundreds who worked for four years on one of the most innovative projects to hit cinema and television screens for years. This documentary begins as an insightful look at the films gestation but soon becomes Esomething designed to give amateur animators cause to salivate. If you don’t want to make a similar film in the cosy privacy of your bedroom, you won’t gain much from this documentary’s final portion dealing with how the puppets were individually conceived, sketched, sculpted and manipulated from the ceiling.
Strings is beautifully captivating and exquisite to watch. Characters take on their individually sketched lives not on the screen itself but in the viewer’s imagination. We recognise the characters we’ve seen countless times before and revel in the chance to see them weave yet another story of tortured souls tortured by events beyond their own control. Do other people, circumstances and situations manipulate us or is free will much more than an illusion? Catch a glimpse of the dance of the puppets from the sidelines. Be a wallflower for a moment and see the face of your own world reflected back to you through a distorted, rippling mirror of woe and warning.
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