There's a certain measure of beauty striven for by artists in this world, a dream of absolute aesthetic perfection heretofore thought unreachable by the flawed hand of humanity. This dream has just become reality. My Little Pony: The Princess Promenade has opened a doorway to a realm of staggering beauty, one that can't be explained away with simple words. To watch this film is an experience like no other. To quaff the heady brew of its majesty is to wrap yourself in a blanket of enlightenment. You don't just see its purity, you taste it. It fills you. I am not a religious man, but this film is as close to God as one can come in this wretched world of ours.
Any attempt at analysis of how the film achieves what it does is meaningless. One can certainly break it down into its component parts, though this yields more questions than answers. (1) A narrative of staggering force and clarity. (2) Simple yet elegant camera-work, comparable to the masterworks of Ozu, yet leagues beyond even his understated beauty. (3) A swirling palette of colors, always moving yet never extravagant. (4) A troupe of actors who will accept nothing less than to become these noble beasts, to cast off the shackles of their own human identities and, through their words, conjure a kind of concentrated beauty from the very aether around them. Yet this is nothing more than a simplification--a reduction of what is by definition vast and unknowable to a straightforward list of observable attributes. MLP:TPP is so much more than the sum of its parts, and must be felt to be believed.
That this film hasn't received more critical attention is a monumental tragedy. Though perhaps... perhaps the real tragedy is within ourselves. It may be that we are simply not ready to open our hearts, let the scales fall from our eyes, and embrace the only true beauty that really exists in this world: My Little Pony.
