The Lorax and Movie Compromises

With the Oscars out of the way and with it the 2011 movie year truly finished and the traditional fallow months for films finished, it's time to enjoy the first really good (hopefully) 2012 Hollywood animated film, The Lorax, based on the classic environmental fable by Dr. Seuss.

I remember seeing reading the book and seeing the original TV special in the 1970s and it was easily one of the most upsetting animated TV specials I ever saw as the greedy Once-Ler despoils a wilderness and depopulates it of all wild life. That tone of course is exactly the point of the show to see the consequences of reckless corporate greed with a  powerful ending where the boy listening to this story is charged with the task to replant the forest. Why there has been no mention of linking this special with the classic Canadian Oscar winning animated short, The Man Who Planted Trees (available at YouTube) where a shepherd manages to do precisely that is beyond me.

That being said, this kind of story would never do for a feature film as is; it would be an interminable downer of a story no mainstream film audience would sit through for over an hour with children. With that in mind, it looks like the film will be taking a balanced approached with a careful expansion of the story where the original plot will be expanded as a flashback, with the main action of the boy struggling to undo the devastation.  Furthermore, the film will apparently be expanding its theme to target urban sprawl with the boy's becoming a Seussian version of The Prisoner's Village.

 If my guesses are right, those are really good artistic calls: the film would have a passionately active tone that gives its environmental theme a powerful sense of hope with just the right kind of fantasy to create a convincing happy ending in a lighthearted fantasy land. That can inspire at least kids in spirit to think about environmental concerns without making them feel so helpless as to their enormity. In that spirit, turning the Once-Ler into a human is an excellent idea that should avoid any confusion for kids about their own species' responsibility for their world. Furthermore, the idea of the constant surveillance by the villains feels natural of their evil determination to maintain a wasteland of the soul in their artificial domain. In short, this feels like a adaptation expansion that feels like a labor of love as Horton Hears A Who became.

Unfortunately, the marketing of the film is another matter. Namely for an environmental themed film to have tie-ins with Mazda, a car company, is a red flag that you can't dismiss and disposable diapers are an equal problem for obvious reasons.

As much the contemporary economics of filmmaking dictate such arrangements, you'd think the producers would be more wary of being accused of greenwashing at its most blatant.  Of course, I can just see them giving the usual excuses with the line that if they had a problem with it, they can always see the original special instead. Still, this kind of marketing will be everywhere and mixed messages will be abounding regardless.

For myself, I'm curious to see how the film itself will deal with its theme and if it maintains the essential point of Dr. Seuss' message from his book. If that integrity is maintained, then I would worry less about the film's impact.  After all, years after the film's marketing and merchandise have faded away, the film itself will remain a part of a film company's library as the essential point of the artistic enterprise that could inspire generations.  That may be an imperfect hope, but it is the best we can hope for this, the most expensive of the arts.

Anyways, while I am waiting, I will enjoying one of the classic silent films tonight at the Western Undergranduate Film Society, The Last Laugh by F.W. Murnau.  It's a celebrated work of pantomime of an old man's fall from grace that needs only one intertitle to tell its story and that's as a poke at movie conventions by Murnau.  After seeing the schlocky, if rather exciting at times, mess of a superhero film, Ghost Rider: The Spirit of Vengeance with all of Nicholas Cage's overacting, this will be a refreshing clearing of the cinematic palate.