a different way of storytelling

Rating: 8/10 (30 March 2006)

although i am not at all sure, if i "like" the movie, if it did entertain me fully- if there weren't some really silly moments in it, i have to say i am surprised by the way it is told. the mixture of genres, the exaggeration, the artificial setting and characters on the one hand, the most serious conflict and motivation of the hero make it quite unique. Having seen various Hollywood movies one gets very used of and very bored with heroic, lofty showdowns and reduced-to-the-symbolic actions. But here i found myself inside a parable and it occurred to me while watching that i was feeling like a child being told a sinister fairytale by somebody i trust. and i mean feeling: there was a dark magic world revealing before me, dragging me inside but as well pushing me away by the stylization. the plot is extremely simple and as the point of it all is the moral responsibility every human being has and has to be serious with, the staging concentrates on the elaboration of that moral conflict, presuming rightly that the audience is ready to accept the ,well, ancient way of being addressed, leaving a lot of space for the own imagination (mask) The hints on actual policy only deepen my impression that the makers' intention is to show that good and evil never are connected with any ideal or ideology, but must be discovered and checked again and again within oneself. that, too i think is an both ancient and actual point. it is worth watching.