It all began with a French children's movie called Les Enfants de Timpelbach. I couldn't resist renting it - not that I really tried to - as it involved most of my favourite things in cinema; careful set & costume design, children having misadventures, a fairy-tale atmosphere, messy hair, and whimsically mismatched clothing. It piqued my love of storybook eccentricity to a degree that might embarrass anyone who actually believed that they were a grown-up (as They say, growing old is inevitable, but growing up is optional).
Enchanted, I decided that I just had to find something - anything - in the city with that kind of magic. So I sent a search request to my good friends at Google, and discovered...nothing. Which might be the expected result, seeing as the internet is no place to look for magic. I tried searching for images, art, blogs, anything that captured that atmosphere, too, but came up with nothing. I started to despair. Poor V received a very frustrated and somewhat ragey message lamenting the predictable artificiality of everything. Everyone seems to try to conform to a style! I said; I'm not asking for originality (doesn't really exist, does it?), really, just creativity, said I.
But, after a some time & distraction, I saw my own silliness. That atmosphere of magic isn't something you find, it's something you make! At risk of sounding nauseatingly saccharine, it's the everyday wonder at what is and what could be. In the film mentioned above, everything is markedly unusual, and the children, in the fashion of children, turn everything upside-down and backwards. My habit of classifying certain people & behaviours as 'grown up' often frustrates others because they don't know what I mean, and all too often I'm not articulate enough to explain it - but essentially it's jadedness. It's the idea that you've been there and done that, and you know what's what and it's all very unsurprising.
But it isn't! It never is! That 'storybook eccentricity' just exaggerates the oddity of life - and adds a bit of stylization, I'll admit. The idea that things are ever the same, predictable & unchanging in life is completely erroneous. The differences are just sometimes not very noticeable or exciting. And the idea that you know anything - now that's just avarice! Children, because they're relatively new to this world, see more possibilities in things. Naturally, they want to feel like they've got a good grasp on what's what, so they tend to be obnoxiously, obtusely insistent about what they know. But, to quote the authority on Growing Up, C.S. Lewis,
"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development."
So, that's my review of Les Enfants de Timpelbach - and it's pretty clear that being a film critic is not my destiny, unless the position is open at the Chronic Rambler gazette.
All Timpelbach stills from here - I'm afraid they really don't do the film justice, though!
Enchanted, I decided that I just had to find something - anything - in the city with that kind of magic. So I sent a search request to my good friends at Google, and discovered...nothing. Which might be the expected result, seeing as the internet is no place to look for magic. I tried searching for images, art, blogs, anything that captured that atmosphere, too, but came up with nothing. I started to despair. Poor V received a very frustrated and somewhat ragey message lamenting the predictable artificiality of everything. Everyone seems to try to conform to a style! I said; I'm not asking for originality (doesn't really exist, does it?), really, just creativity, said I.
But, after a some time & distraction, I saw my own silliness. That atmosphere of magic isn't something you find, it's something you make! At risk of sounding nauseatingly saccharine, it's the everyday wonder at what is and what could be. In the film mentioned above, everything is markedly unusual, and the children, in the fashion of children, turn everything upside-down and backwards. My habit of classifying certain people & behaviours as 'grown up' often frustrates others because they don't know what I mean, and all too often I'm not articulate enough to explain it - but essentially it's jadedness. It's the idea that you've been there and done that, and you know what's what and it's all very unsurprising.
But it isn't! It never is! That 'storybook eccentricity' just exaggerates the oddity of life - and adds a bit of stylization, I'll admit. The idea that things are ever the same, predictable & unchanging in life is completely erroneous. The differences are just sometimes not very noticeable or exciting. And the idea that you know anything - now that's just avarice! Children, because they're relatively new to this world, see more possibilities in things. Naturally, they want to feel like they've got a good grasp on what's what, so they tend to be obnoxiously, obtusely insistent about what they know. But, to quote the authority on Growing Up, C.S. Lewis,
"To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development."
So, that's my review of Les Enfants de Timpelbach - and it's pretty clear that being a film critic is not my destiny, unless the position is open at the Chronic Rambler gazette.
All Timpelbach stills from here - I'm afraid they really don't do the film justice, though!
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