Le chien, le général et les oiseaux (2003) Reviews

• A complex but very approachable movie

  benoitmars2017-09-15

  The other and quite critical review has persuaded me to write my very first one after hundreds of ratings on this website and thousands of movies watched. Which include quite a lot of animated movies for children. This one, even if it may not be an absolute masterpiece, deserves much better than it could seem. First, the story is quite impressive: it deals with war, old age, loneliness, nature, urban life, animal freedom, challenge of the law, achievement, dreams, death… without any difficulty for a 4-year-old child. On this point, it's worth many masterpieces of the brilliant Miyazaki. The great work of Tonino Guerra, based on real testimonies and adapted by himself, is used at its best, and mixes perfectly complexity and ease of understanding. The main character does not need of identification to be really moving, and the editing can afford flash back and several dreams with a surprising clarity. Second, graphics: there are also based on Sergueï Barkhin's drawing used in the original book. There are enhanced by an impressive work on perspective and perception of space, with lots of "quotations" of famous painters, Van Gogh, Chagall, etc. Colors also reveal massive researches and subtlety. All there are visually efficient, rich and subtle. Sounds and music may be more understated, but they show a very welcome lightness even if the few darker scenes, including army battles. They escape the loudness war that has concerned even movies for the youngest and spoiled many of them for a couple of decades. Nonetheless, the use of computer to animate the drawings could look old-fashioned, a bit "8-bit style". But the movie does not pretend to be technically impressive, and rather focus on feelings, understanding of the world, humor or power of imagination to move young children with a great success. Finally, this film manages in what a lot of works of art are looking for: to hide a large amount of complexity and work under appearances of simplicity, almost naivety.

• disappointing

  roliamjap2004-06-20

  Let's face it: French animation has proved better than that. With great stuff like Le Roi et l'Oiseau, or Les Maitres du Temps, and, more recently, Kirikou and Les Triplettes de Belleville, it has shown much creativity and was able to find its own style, clearly different from American and Japanimation. Clearly, Le Chien... is well below that and probably doesn't even have any ambition to match such masterpieces (or so I hope). For the good points: the story shows much originality, locating the scene in Old Mother Russia, the hero being an old forgotten general who defeated Napoleon. Good start, but that's all you'll get, as the rest is soooo predictable. Other originality: for the animation technique, they used computers to animate hand-made drawings. Well, some may call it a "style", but the result is very, very poor, making you think they didn't have much time or practice to do it... which is confirmed by the overuse of zooming and traveling. Just like a poor TV program. And it is sooooo slow! Dialogues are pathetic, far from the poetry the original story and drawings deserved. Those could have been far better, and they're not even cute. Well, let's praise here an effort to make an original movie for children under 7 or 8. Probably this is only for kids, too bad I couldn't find a real point to this tale, beyond a very naive and unskilled attempt to teach the value of freedom to our children. From an adult point of view, the whole life of the old man is just very sad and depressing. This production is like one big step behind -or, at least, aside- in the history of European animation, especially disappointing because director Francis Nielsen is close to a genius (Il etait une fois l'homme, etc).