This movie has done so much to shape my life that I almost hate to give it a mere four stars. However, I must not let my personal bias interfere with my objective assessment of the film's quality.
I loved this film so much as a child, I was given a copy of the book for Christmas. I read it until it was bent completely out of shape and its red-and-green printed pages had turned smudgy at the edges. But even after consummating my love affair with the novel (written by someone ironically named Michael Ende), I still find the movie to be every bit as magical, if somewhat different.
At the end of this review I'll do a comparison of the two for anyone who is interested. My movie review ends at the horizontal line.
The Neverending Story is a must-see for your children if you value creativity, passion, and fantasy. If you fervently believe in grounding your kids in the "real world," you may want to seek other fare, as this movie is the ultimate champion of imagination.
From my current perspective, the film is maybe a three-star movie, as its special effects leave a bit to be desired, and the kid who plays Bastian is unspeakably irritating. The acting is also a bit melodramatic for most adult stomachs, as well. However, I give this movie four stars because it isn't meant for you. It is meant for your children. And if you have a shy, bookish child like the one I used to be, it will captivate her to the point that her heart will break when the credits roll... she'll be hoping that truly, as promised, the film will never end.
I can't overestimate how much this film shaped my life. To this day, nothing scares me more than... well... nothing. Apathy terrifies me more than hatred, pain is preferable to boredom, ANYTHING is preferable to Nothing. My fear of The Void may have been one of the reasons I loved this film, or the film may have planted the seeds of that fear in me, but whether the chicken or the egg came first, the imagery and symbolism in the movie have lodged themselves indelibly in my subconscious.
What can be harder to fight than a great yawning void that's slowly eating away at everything that is real? You can't fight Nothing with your fists. You can't shoot it with a gun. You can't bully it into submission. Nothing doesn't care. It just swallows up everything you throw at it, blank and unchanging.
Combine this horrifying premise with the truly heroic character of Atreyu, one of the bravest and most noble characters in all of children's fiction, and you have a recipe for surefire child hypnosis. And that's only the story WITHIN the story. In "the real world," poor Bastian is getting picked on by bullies, thrown in dumpsters, and taken to task by his cold, distant father for having his "head in the clouds." His only friends are books... and finally he finds a friend that will change his life forever.
The individual moments in this film are just as stunning as the whole picture. From the haunting opening title song to the rock-biter's achingly tragic monologue about his hands (which even now gives me a little chill of sorrowful pleasure), The Neverending Story is like a series of beautiful gems, strung on a plot-thread that holds the movie together beautifully.
If you have children aged 6 to 12 or so who have the fire of imagination in their souls, it would be a crime not to show them this film. Let them talk to you about it afterward. You'll be surprised at the thoughts that fall out of their mouths once this film sets their brain-wheels spinning.
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Now, about the novel. Michael Ende's translation of this German beauty is pure poetry... I can't imagine that the story could have been any more captivating in its original language.
There are some pointed differences between the novel and the movie, however. To sum them up, the novel is infinitely more complex. Eeverything is imbued with a deeper meaning. The scary parts are scarier. The fun parts are even more fun. The sad parts are sadder -- except for the swamp scene, which couldn't possibly be any sadder than it is in the film. Somehow, giving Artax a voice (which the novel does) makes the scene that much less mysterious and troubling.
Overall though, the novel presents a much richer, more colorful, more dreamlike experience, and will actually give even more meaning to the film, once you've read it. (Just see the film once first, so you can enjoy it for what it is without expecting it to represent the novel... always good advice).
In the novel, Bastian is a fat kid. It makes a tremendous amount of difference in the feel of the story when the kid isn't a Hollywood cutie, but someone who truly does not fit in. Not only that, but the death of Bastian's mother and its effect on the remaining two-person "family" is dealt with in much more detail.
Perhaps the most important difference is that the movie leaves off only about halfway through the novel. Once Bastian is pulled in to the story and becomes part of Fantasia, the story becomes, if possible, even more fascinating. We see his wishes come true one by one, and how his access to unlimited power eventually corrupts him. Atreyu, the hero he worshiped and strove to emulate through the first half of the book, becomes his friend and equal, and then, in a scene so heartrending it still chokes me up, Bastian turns on him and betrays him.
But don't give up hope! Though the novel wanders through some very dark territory, just when we think all is lost, we are given one of the most moving and beautiful endings of all time, and we realize what the story was really about all along.
As much as the movie is a classic, the novel is ten times that. If I had to rate it the way I do movies, it would get five stars from me without hesitation. It is an equally enjoyable read for adults as well as for children, and would be excellent for reading aloud to a child who is old enough to read by himself, but enjoys the closeness of a parent and the sharing of an excellent story.
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