The Deer King - Il re dei cervi

One part Mononoke, one part Maquia, and a third part season 3 of Attack on Titan. This should have been a full season of a show instead of a film, which completely hobbles its coherency. I know nothing of the pedigree of the writers and filmmakers and I wanted to like it more, but its a complete mess.

The opening is lovely the way it tells its story totally visually and practically dialogue-free, but the pacing is horribly rushed from there, plot points and exposition are delivered multiple times, its unclear who is with/against who at any time - especially in the third act - and our main character is passive and hardly developed outside of what happens/happened TO him. It ends up feeling like three movies all competing to be the main story instead of a cohesive, satisfying whole.

Our showing began with a message from Ando, the director, who seems like a very sweet, introverted guy who just wanted to make the best film he could. He's a great visualist, so don't be too hard on him. After working with Miyazaki, Kon & Shinkai, he has impossibly big shoes to fill.

I've read lots of comments saying it had an unfinished plot but if you get past the song that plays at the end you get to see what everyone's doing in the future and I think it wraps up the story wonderfully. The movie was the perfect length for the plot, any shorter and it wouldn't have made any sense. I think the film did a great job at slowly and steadily guiding the viewer through the story, the emotions conveyed through the art music and expressions told more of the story than the dialogue and I love that. Nearly all the characters were written wonderfully and saw development, something rare in movies. Overall beautiful and I loved it.

The character and animation style remembers the movies from studio Ghibli, it's very well animated, the art is a masterpiece, if is only for the art and the animation, 10/10 stars for it. But the story unfortunately is boring, the show starts good, the first act gives you a lot of elements to continue watching the story, but after it the story get rushed and confusing in some parts. It was hard to not sleep while watching it, and the end was very unexpected and very japanese-like storytelling (I think a lot of people won't be full pleased with this kind of ending).

Overall, it's just a pity to see so much talent and resource wasted in producing a such boring story, I only recommend this movie for people who just enjoy seeing good art, because the story isn't much interesting and you have good chance in falling sleeping while watching it.

Corona times.

Power of origin.

Picture itself is an art

Unique universal world view.

No more information i have

I am looking forward see again.

Shika no ou.

Production-wise, it is immaculate.

From the beautiful animations, to the employed designs, cinematography, characters and even the choice of music.

Sadly, while it isn't a terrible movie, it fails to be something at all.. The movie is quite long, and feels even longer. Keeping the viewer always at a distance from anything interesting or concrete. I find really unappealing how it pretends to be something (logic and medicine), while the story clearly shows you something else entirely (spiritual and magical). What are we to take out of it exactly!? What was the message?

Even the way it wraps up is completely unsatisfying.

The comparisons to Mononoke are utterly unavoidable. And rob it of any individuality and tarnishing the layer of creativity and world-building it could have attained alone. It's so weird when a studio could be capable of copying something half-way with such quality, yet leaving it without a soul.

It's hard to care for these kind of photoplays.

I'd give it a 5, but everything aside from the script is just too good.