Polar Express

So it was with much trepidation and even utter fear in my heart that I went to see this movie. After all, the last time I went to see a full-length adaptation of a favorite Christmas story, what I got was Ron Howard's absolutely God-awful "The Grinch". Having grown up with the book "The Polar Express" (according to my mom, I cited it as my favorite Christmas present when I was seven), I did not want to see this story bastardized in any way. Honestly, I was prepared for "Polar Express" to be a complete wreck. But instead…

It soared. Completely. What makes the film such a success is not so much even the story itself, but an execution which somehow manages to inject every frame of the film with a feeling of childlike wonder and exuberance. In addition, there are so many clever touches and details added throughout that a feeling of mystery and excitement just fills the viewer. Among these are the waiters dancing and singing while serving hot chocolate to the kids on the train (a very funny scene, as well), the factory where the presents are prepared, and a ghost-like hobo who is never really explained, but is incredibly crucial to the feel of the film. At one point, three of the children wander lost through the empty streets of Santa's North Pole town. As they wander, various old Christmas recordings are heard playing on phonographs throughout the town. The music provides a pleasant and nostalgic ambiance to the scene. It's touches like this that absolutely make the film.

I'll never understand why films seem to be required to be at least 90 minutes long. I would pay money to see a 40-minute film, as long as it were good. And even if it sucked, I would have at least wasted less time. What I'm getting at is I have no idea why a 32-page picture book needed to be a 99-minute movie. What this means is that the original story is VASTLY expanded upon. However, what is added in actually fits quite well with the essence and spirit of the book. Some of it is just sheer entertainment; the train track is like a roller coaster, characters ski on top of the cars, danger lurks around every step of the journey to the North Pole (but admittedly fun danger). Other aspects further illuminate and expand upon the book's basic theme of the virtue of belief in the implausible. So I have no idea why this was made into a full-length, but in the end, I'm glad it was. It didn't even feel too long (and I think everything is too long).

Much criticism has fallen on the look of the characters in the movie. I can agree to a point. While there is incredible visual detail in the faces, they usually seem void of expression. In general, a lot of the motion seems rather wooden, as well. The scenery, on the other hand, is gorgeous. Overall, the minor problems in animation (which really boil down to a matter of taste anyway) are certainly not enough to diminish what is an overwhelmingly successful movie. Score: 8/10

The animation may not hold up quite as well 15 years later, but this one still has a lot of heart and magic behind it to make it stay in the Christmas rotation.

The Polar Express delivered me all the way back to childhood and my own faith in Santa Claus at the age of five. I could not only hear the bells, I could see his sleigh in the night sky. Chris Van Allsburg is to be commended for writing an excellent fantasy and Tom Hanks for conducting the wonder tour to beat them all. The special effects are just outstanding, the story line credible and heartwarming. The characters are believable and utterly charming. The children depicted are our own. I would recommend this film to any and all who love Christmas and remember what it is to believe. The experience of watching makes you a participant, breathless to see what comes next. I can hardly wait to view it on IMAX and am taking my entire family, including seven grandchildren to the Tulsa Cinemark this season. Let's hope we see more of this quality venue in months and years to come.

Directed by veteran Robert Zemeckis, It is a production that unveils, throughout its 100 minutes, the story of an American boy in the late 1950s. By witnessing the polar express stop at his door, the young man will have the most fantastic experience of his life. Life, something that will mark him forever and allow his belief in Christmas, not as firm as one would expect for a child, to become even more solid. Initially reticent, the young man agrees to leave on the train that takes him on a tour full of incredible adventures. Each piece of territory crossed is a different learning experience, marked by its still incipient trajectory. He fights with Scrooge, the famous evil Christmas spirit, immortalized by the literature of Charles Dickens, passes by the famous Polar Aurora, a place with the optical phenomenon due to the brightness observed in the night skies of the polar regions, due to the impact of particles of solar wind with the high atmosphere of the earth, channeled by the magnetic field of our planet, that is, an impressive visual spectacle that leaves no one indifferent.

In the face of conflicts, as it is worth mentioning, the boy no longer believes in Santa Claus, the narrative becomes an allegory for the need to believe and invest in the "so" Christmas spirit. We check with some resistance, because the foot in reality does not allow us to surrender too much to the utopias proposed by the American cinematographic discourse. However, one of the "tasks" of art is precisely to allow us to clarify reality through fictional proposals, thus, the ticket to enter the world of Zemecks film is "bought" by all those who indulge in the charms of art. Narrative that unfolds before our eyes, a set of scenes built using visually incredible resources.

Zemeckis's filmography is known for playing with the ludic, and here it is no different. The script to be well digested by the viewer needs to be seen as a story about magic and aborted beliefs. Alan Silvestri's music helps to punctuate this feeling that life in the eyes of a child is more beautiful, even if that child no longer believes in legendary figures, as is the case with the central character. In "The Polar Express" we have a short, simple and objective plot. The director's intention was never to create a work of art in the plot with this film, but to prove that you can rescue barbaric feelings and emotions with the Christmas theme. Now imagine Tom Hanks facing five different roles in the same film. Imagine? Something very crazy to think about, mainly because the "motion capture" technique (technique used to make the character Gollum from the series "The Lord of the Rings, for example) was used, which captured all of Hanks' movements and transferred them to the computer, mixing reality and animation, fantasy and flesh and blood beings. The actor plays a boy who does not believe in the Christmas spirit, his father, a locomotive driver, a stroller and Santa Claus himself. It is a versatility never seen in the world of movie theaters.

This technique was used in a magnificent way for the sake of narrative. To get an idea of what was done, all the actors in the film acted in front of an empty screen, with motion capture sensors attached throughout their bodies. The data from these sensors were passed on to computers and served as a template for the creation of the character in the film itself. As these sensors were responsible for capturing movements and facial expressions, the actors did not necessarily have to have the same body as the character. This allowed Hanks to play five different characters. And look, it was not easy to shape all of his expressions, so much so that the work lasted almost a year. The interesting thing was to see Steven Tyler, vocalist of the band Aerosmith, as Elf singing a song at the end of the film. Very funny! They managed to capture the essence of their appearance (big mouth and ears)!

The film makes use of a very new advent for its time, and at least the main character is very excited. Already adults and peripheral child characters are astonishing to look at. This is thanks to the concept of Uncanny Valley, which preaches that figures that imitate human beings when they approach what man is become strange. The dialogues and interactions are quite artificial, but not as much as the attempts to make musical numbers. The waiters who serve the wagons are so tough that they look like imitations of androids. This issue is somewhat appeased by the parties involving animals running, flying and interacting with the typical things in the scenarios. Wolves and eagles represent more than just animals typical of North American fauna, and result in representatives of the work's sense of adventure. The criticisms received at the time of the launch, stoning the flesh-and-bone characters, their lackluster movement, their rubberized look and their glazed eyes, forgot the most important component of any short story: simplicity and narrative poetry.

And although the visual is the only really negative point of this technique, like ignoring the perfection of Zemeckis's camera, it went through, following in the smallest details the movement of a lost golden ticket and the travellings that lead us nimbly in and out of the train, especially during the free fall on the tracks and crossing the thin ice? The option for elegant frames also stands out, and the counter-plongée, which accompanies the little boy's belief through the frozen floor, not only dignifies the moment but anticipates the arrival of Santa Claus. Meanwhile, the photograph by Don Burgess and Robert Presley is breathtaking - as shown in the image below -, and the intense gold of the train ticket or the lighting of the bonfire on the face of a Beggar, the angel presents in the vast majority of people. Christmas stories, is enough to make a beautiful Christmas story shine.

At the end of the projection, we were left with the feeling that Zemeckis achieved his goal, of combining technology and magic in the same product. He, who is admittedly one of the directors who most seek to develop and perfect techniques and technologies, ends up creating a plastically flawless film, transposing to the screen with admirable perfection the engravings from Allsburg's book. Zemeckis also creates practically unimaginable plans and sequences, in a brutal effort to want to innovate. Zemeckis also loves to make references to other films. This time, he made the children's classic "The Fantastic Chocolate Factory", starring Gene Wilder. The ticket that gives access to the train is golden, just like in the classic movie. In addition to similarities like the big chocolate factory, the gift factory or even the driver with the funny Willy Wonka.

Assuming a metalinguistic tone on purpose - the Conductor, one of the characters voiced by Tom Hanks, refers sensibly to abandoned toys - and accidentally - Ebenzer Scrooge's puppet would serve as a mold some years later for the personification of the classic character by Jim Carey, O Polar Express culminates in the detail plan of a hand bell, which is much more than the complete proof of the fantastic journey, it is the true Christmas spirit within each one of us. The inner child who screams and cries out for the sincere remembrance of his attachment to the beautiful illusion of the good old man, of the communion of gifts and brotherly love, whose sound materializes in the tinkling of the bell at the ear of the, now adult, little boy.

On the other hand, it is noticeable that the biggest problem of The Polar Express is not so much its innovative and uncomfortable aspect - something crucial for a Christmas plot - and its plot, common and obvious. The protagonist is a boy who is starting to stop believing in Santa Claus. He is growing up, and with that, forgetting the magic of childhood. The events in The Polar Express take place in a very traditional and unoriginal way. There are not many news or discoveries: everything goes very smoothly, without scares or surprises. The few moments of suspense and tension soon dissipate, and normality then dictates the course of action again. The impression is that he devoted a lot of time to the appearance of the film and very little to the development of the script.

The film itself looks more like a roller coaster. You will have fun watching the ups and downs of the trip, with exciting moments and action sequences where the beauty of the most magical time of the year is paramount, while others are strange and out of place, like the setting of children singing songs. At least when the final season arrives, the home of Santa Claus, the magical character is rescued with a sequence of events that show the intimacy of the elven officials, including the architecture of miniature houses since they are small. There comes a moment in the film that is surreal to imagine that a boy can walk on top of a moving train, but it does not bother you because you are already involved in the fantasy atmosphere provided by the characters.

The care with the visuals of sets and costumes of the inhabitants of the magical place breaks the skepticism of the central character of The Polar Express too much, and this is certainly a film that has a lot of audacity, being a pioneer in many points that would become quite common in children's productions. And adults later on. The movement capture technique, new at the time, brings to the film the combination of "real images" and animation, in one of the most surprising Christmas cinematic experiences in the history of cinema. In addition, The Polar Express is a very, very beautiful and careful film with its theme, even if the story could have denser characters and conflicts to make the experience even more unforgettable. Still, it is a beautiful production about friendship and how we should, without being too deluded, cultivate our dreams, with a view to making our existence more bearable.

A simple story . . . beautifully told . . . magnificently visualized.

The IMAX experience was stunning.

I did not expect to enjoy the story as much as I did. Simple but quite heartwarming.

Although it started a bit slow, it continued to gain momentum (no train analogy intended) through its conclusion. I was not a great lover of the animation of the human characters, but the other animation, whether it be the train, the scenery, the reindeer, or the elves (are elves human?) was quite well done.

Perhaps the best review I can provide is that after I watched the Polar Express, I just felt happier.