In several of the best scenes of Strange world, color is everything. Director Don Hall seems to have opted to create a layer of reality through stimuli. Whether visual, movement or sound. The scenes of the film are sustained by an sometimes irritating vitality.
An extraordinary way of defining a completely unknown type of reality. The great chromatic variations extend from one side to the other, until linking the idea of the tangible as an idea that transforms quickly. but that also runs the risk of being excessive and even unpleasant at its most daring points.
For Strange world, the great adventure takes place precisely in that awareness that nothing that surrounds the characters is recognizable. Much less, understandable at first glance. A great immersive, sensory and intellectual adventure that announces equally portentous discoveries.
It’s just that the movie fails to trace that very specific line about what lies ahead beyond the inexplicable. Actually, one of the biggest problems of Strange world is to mix the sense of adventure with that of great discoveries. Especially when all your characters have different goals to undertake the great journey of their lives.
Strange world
Strange World is more ambitious than effective and much more bizarre than deep. The combination ends up showing a scenario in which the overexposure of visual resources matters more than the message. Even with an interracial family and a gay character, the film lacks reflection on the big themes it proposes. With its obvious references to Richard Fleischer’s Fantastic Voyage and elements of 1950s sci-fi, the cinematic landscape is poignant. But greater care is needed when telling a story that, after all, takes place in a family setting.
The family legacy of Strange world
Halfway between an ecological epic and its link to self-discovery, Strange world try to explore the ideal. At least, the way that brotherly love and the inevitable family legacies lead to a deeper insight into identity. Who am I? The members of the Clade clan, adventurers par excellence, frequently ask themselves.
They do so while remaining in Avalonia as custodians of a heritage that exceeds and defines them. After all, this extraordinary enclave bordered by a mountain range is a passage into family history. This radiant valley has been home to generations of the Clane. Also of all the ways in which the family has questioned its duty to the world.
For each member, being a hero — or hoping to be one — is an adventure in the making. One that binds — for better or worse — to the way they are understood. So much so that the central event that gives rise to the journey of history is, precisely, a way of finding the extraordinary in the middle of the ordinary.
Once upon a time there was a lost explorer
Jeager Clade (with the vocal talents of Dennis Quaid) is a hero. He was, in any case, before disappearing under mysterious circumstances and leaving Avalonia without protection. So his figure becomes an idea of considerable value to all the inhabitants and a mystery to his son Searcher (Jake Gyllenhaal).
What happened to the august family patriarch? Is this yet another puzzle to be discovered in the long list of Clade achievements? Strange as it may seem, the argument of Strange world it just assumes the disappearance as a fact with which each member must deal.
Especially his son, who somehow looks at the father as the ideal and what he is supposed to be. “Sometimes it’s like chasing a shadow,” Searcher complains quietly, seeing Jeager as an insight he has about himself and his family.
Strange world and their failed proposals
But Seacher assumes that his duty in the world is more important than the memory he must carry. As an outstanding inventor, he ends up finding a plant capable of turning Avalonia into an amazing world. Pando is a substance halfway between the mystical and the inexplicable, which has the ability to be ductile enough to be universally useful. So Seacher explores all the possibilities of him.
Of course, the town benefits from his prolific imagination. Very soon, the place is transformed into a kind of oasis in which everything is possible and, much more, everything is in the limits of the formidable. good part of Strange world it places a more than notorious emphasis on the need to demonstrate one’s own value as a very personal goal.
A complicated point in a clan like that of the Clade. How to stand out in a complicated family inheritance? Either through great achievements (like those of the absent Jeager) or dedication and effort. The premise of Strange world has a considerable need to deepen the notion of triumph. Even Ethan (Jaboukie Young-White), who tries to understand his life through the seemingly unrequited love he feels for another boy. The notion of identity goes through places of interest — achievement, hope, sexual orientation — without the script stopping at any of them.
the script of Strange world he has real trouble fitting the idea of reassurance into a larger narrative about why he’s adventuring. As if the premise couldn’t link two essential points in his account, his account of the effort at reaffirmation is confused. At best, hackneyed and predictable. All the more so when much of his interest lies in how the Clade family understands each other. A point that ends up being less important than what the first part of the film hinted at.
Disney in form, but not in substance
But when Pando’s plantations begin to wither, Searcher and the rest of his family must go on a great adventure to save Avalonia. It is a plot turn that is superficial and, above all, sustained by the rush of the script to justify its narrative center. The Clade are adventurers and their destiny is to traverse the world. Either discover it, understand it or, as in this case, save it.
For your second stretch, it is evident that Strange world It is more focused on delving into the wonderful than in the most complex of its history. After all, the idea is to model the narrative to an unexplored plane of reality that is visually dazzling. Much more to the extent that it is linked to the perception of great deeds and long-term triumphs. Strange world displays all the talent of Disney to reveal a type of parallel reality in which Pando’s origin makes sense. But it is also a stage in which the Clade can settle all their conflicts.
However, the story doesn’t have the depth, beauty, or ingenuity to tie together all the themes you want to show. Much less in the midst of its strange visual setting, linked in singular ways to an apparently deeper layer of Strange world. Among the display of colors, shapes and inexplicable creatures, the Clade’s deed ends up looking lackluster. Much more when the script decays in its most emotional moments to give way to a journey through this underground world where everything is possible.
Strange worldgood intentions without greater depth
In the end, Strange world it is more ambitious than effective and, especially, far more bizarre than profound. The combination ends up showing a scenario in which the overexposure of visual resources matters more than the message. Even with an interracial family and a gay character, the film lacks reflection on the major themes it proposes.
With its obvious references to Fantastic Voyage, by Richard Fleischer, and elements of 1950s science fiction, the cinematic landscape is moving. But greater care is needed when telling a story that, after all, takes place in a family setting.
Much more, in the middle of a space in which reality is born from the visual inspiration of many different sources. For his last sequences, discovered the great secret of a world to explore and with the Clade family reunited, Strange world seems curiously incomplete. Perhaps the biggest problem is a delirious journey through unknown spaces in which emotion could be considered a link to its greatest mysteries.