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Never again will a story be told as if it is the only one.
John Berger
In the early nineties when I watched Fantasia for the first time on VHS, little did I know that this film would be an annual must-see for me almost thirty years later. Though Disney’s first version of Fantasia was released more than four decades before my incarnation, there is something about it and subsequent versions that continue to give me pause to marvel.
I must confess that prior to Fantasia, I was not the biggest fan of animated films. Likewise, my feeling toward classical music was one of mere appreciation. Maybe this is because I associated that musical genre, at the time, with being forced to study. Little did I know that that chance meeting with this Disney treasure would change my outlook in such a profound way. It cultivated in me a life-long love affair with the classics. I think that this is because it did for me what had never been done to this genre of music. It was brought to life through this Disney masterpiece. If ever I wondered about how classical music would look, Fantasia made me wonder no more. The vividness of the images I saw dancing across the screen, to this day, continues to fill me with so much glee.
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Much of Fantasia is presented in the abstract. This presentation is deftly done. In so doing, Fantasia made me fall in love with another genre I never knew I could; abstract art. As a lover of hyper-realism, it took me some time to appreciate that particular art form. For me, a work of art, whether it be a physical painting, a piece of pottery, or something that has been made for the screen, had to look real. But the sublime way in which Fantasia fused the abstract and the real spoke volumes. Interwoven in all of this also is history and aspects of the performing arts. From animals and plants waltzing, to dinosaurs going extinct, Fantasia seamlessly plaits so much together.
Never again will a story be told as if it is the only one, said John Berger. As I intimated earlier, prior to Fantasia I was of the view that things that were expressed in the abstract were nonsensical. Since then, new vistas have been opened to me. New ways of seeing have I come to appreciate, so much so that it has influenced how I look at art.
To think that I can appreciate a film that has dancing mushrooms and fairies and reptiles taking their last breath is rather surprising given my prior tastes. Overall, it is magic floating on the pulse of majestic sounds. Fantasia has no characters and scenes in the traditional sense. What Fantasia is is a fusion of the traditional and the conceptual, stitched together by the ebb and flow of some of the greatest music ever to fall upon these ears of mine.
Here is a link to the contest: @cinetv/cinetv-contest-18-your-favorite-animated-feature-film