patrickfilbeck

This Silly Symphonies short and early work of Disney meiser director Wilfred Jackson, is a prime example of not only how Disney understood the spirit of pop culture Christmas, but how much Disney helped shape it. Santa's Workshop is a classic that draws Santa Clause, his elves, the Christmas factory, the reindeer, the Christmas village and the North Pole so wonderfully that you can't help but look forward to the holidays. The short film creates a comforting warm feeling, is beautifully drawn, full of innocent wit and an incomparable charm of its time. The fact that timeless classics are currently being swept away with a combine built of cultural incomprehension, arrogance and an ahistorical understanding of the world, including this film, is tragic but simply to be ignored. The Twitter bubbles don't watch movies, the Cancel Culture activists don't flush money into the coffers, and the corporations that engage in this nonsense don't understand their own franchises and fans. For the pop culture nerds, however, the timeless classics will remain for all time. Santa's Workshop" is one of them.

This Christmas classic from Disney has not only internalized everything that Christmas is about, but can be seen as a cult classic in its own right, with massive influence on pop culture Christmas dedications.

Burny Mattinson, in his directorial debut, manages to capture the essence of Charles Dickens' Christmas story, and to condense it into a short film that in turn manages to come across like a main course in cinema history. A fantastically animated, lovingly voiced, heavenly directed masterpiece that hits just the right mix of lightness, profundity, pop culture and morals & ethics. The cast of characters from the Disney world is perfectly chosen, the reunion with numerous characters of the magical film forge slipping into new roles is simply fun, the music is aptly composed and the running time is enough to give not only the young viewers a magical evening.

A masterpiece.

For this Disney film, two actually very great directors joined forces. Joe Johnston and Lasse Hallström have both brought some top-class cult films of their very own kind to the screen and so the expectations for the film adaptation of Hoffmann's novella and Tchaikovsky's ballet could be quite high. In part, the expectations were quite fulfilled.

For one thing, the film wades up with a top-notch cast that more than solidly does its job. Watching Foy, Knightley and Mirren in their roles is thoroughly enjoyable. Freeman and the others play solidly, as expected. The story, which is very much based on the Industrial Revolution and reinterpreted, is thoroughly enjoyable, but sometimes gets lost too much in the innovations. In places, a more classical approach would have been quite advantageous. Visually, the film is quite impressive, even if the special effects show weaknesses here and there and are not subtle enough for a film adaptation of such a romantic work of literature and art history. On the other hand, some ideas are really successful, such as the depiction of Mother Ginger in her gigantic tent.

The music and ballet interludes are not incorporated too often in the film, but are convincing where they occur. The basic essence of the plot, i.e. The connection between daughter, family and deceased mother, is lovingly realized in places, but on the other hand also described too shallowly in some places. Small contradictions in the film's narrative are only noticeable by their accumulation, the moral of the story remains somewhat pale due to the simplicism, but is then again heartwarming in the resolution, i.e. The final scene of the film. Disturbing moments, such as the fact that the deceased mother had a favorite daughter, weaken the film briefly, but not throughout. They do linger in the memory, however, and then work against a fundamentally good feeling towards the family story.

All in all, "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" is a well-done Christmas movie for today's times, but it also has to nibble at the flaws and exaggerations of today. Too often modern suspense arcs, which are always the same, are used, not too exaggerated, but still too often the Twitter bubble, that is one of the many deaths of democratic discourse, becomes influentially visible, the finale is too action-packed. On the other hand, the quieter moments, which, in all the beautiful scenery, are present, visible and significantly responsible for the basic mood of the film, but too sparsely integrated. There could have been much more meaningful conversations, more images in the estates and beautifully decorated rooms, more focus on the great costumes and the make-up, which is definitely implemented with love.

But despite the aforementioned weaknesses, the good aspects of the film, the signature of the two directors, which still manages to be visible through the spectacle, barely but sufficiently outweigh them. Thus remains a film that will certainly not become a cult classic, but represents a small novelty in the world of enjoyable Christmas movies and therefore "The Nutcracker and the Four Realms" is quite a welcome film for the cozy season.