Imaginative and visually striking, this movie convincingly presents a world where strings mean life. The story is strong enough to keep you going and make this a fully-featured film, not just an impressive technical exercise. This is a must-see movie and one you want to tell your friends about.
>>> Plot teaser
In a marionette world, a despot ruler is about to try and rectify his own misdeeds by committing suicide and letting his son make a new start and move towards peace. An evil uncle, however, intercepts the plan and re-dresses the king's suicide as an assassination leading the son on a mission of revenge to murder the innocent leader of the rebels.
>>> More comment
This is a world of marionettes where all strings stretch up into heaven and so houses don't have roofs and you die when your headstring is cut. The genius here is in presenting this using marionettes. While that seems an unnecessary observation, you just know that if this was Hollywood produced, it would have been a CG movie.
There are a number of wonderful highlights in the movie regarding this world of marionettes. The One Stringed, the birth (very cool), the suicide, the city gate and the broken hand will all catch your eye and capture your imagination.
The puppet performances are uniformly remarkable. The movement is so brilliant that background movement could easily be mistaken for real human beings. Check out the camp dance to see a superb example of this. You may be somewhat distracted that the mouths do not move but you quickly get used to this and the director only loses track of conversation monentarily in one or two places (though it could just be me).
>>> DVD
Picture and sound quality are not too impressive. With source material this strong visually this should be a reference-quality presentation. Sadly, the film source used is very dirty and the picture is dull when it should feel almost 3-dimensional in clarity. The other shocking thing is that the feature was directed in 2.35:1 aspect ratio but presented at 16:9. Whereas this results in an image that fills your widescreen display, it's not what was originally intended. Still, there is another way of looking at it. The film was shot without the use of anamorphic lenses and this means that a taller image than 2.35:1 is photographed. This allows flexibility when transferring to non-film media such as DVD and television. Extra information that was photographed but not used in the film presentation can be used in the DVD and television presentation. The director made a film in 2.35:1 aspect ratio, however, and that is what I would have preferred to have seen. The clips in the documentary are presented at 2.35:1. Go figure.
>>> DVD Documentary: The World of Strings (about 1 hour long)
Interesting documentary showcasing the effort you knew would go into a production like this. What we do get is something I think you won't see in a Hollywood making-of doc: a clearly-upset producer selling his beloved car to keep the production going.
The strings on the production were 5.4m long which, astonishingly, is almost two storeys above the puppets. The skill of the puppeteers in this production is quite remarkable. Each puppet is about 2 foot tall.
Because puppeteers don't have six hands it took three people to operate each character. There is a great behind-the-scenes, er, scene where a gambol by Hal is shown being filmed. The patience and persistence of these guys is worthy of applause.
>>> DVD Extras
There are few pages of text from the director about the production (also produced on the website) and a pretty useless trailer that doesn't convey the spirit of the film and misleadingly tries to sell it as a Hollywood action movie. Doh!
