Review: April and the Extraordinary World

If you grew up reading Asterix the Gaul or The Adventures of Tintin, you were probably intrigued by the trailers to Avril et le Monde truqué, or April and the Extraordinary World. The film, which uses a combination of computer-assisted hand drawn animation and CGI, is an original story based in a world created by bandes dessinées artist Jacques Tardi.

If you want the pure experience, go now, watch the movie and come back afterward. In a nutshell, if you enjoy Franco-Belgian comics, steampunk or Hayao Miyazaki's movies this will definitely be up your alley. I won't spoil anything major about the plot in the review below, but part of the fun in April is the thrill of discovery, much like the principles of science that motivate the characters therein.

There's a modern term that describes Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror (and Historical Fiction sometimes) collectively as Speculative Fiction. Stories about the "What If".

Existing in the space between futuristic, historical, magical and scientific, April is very much a speculative-fiction story. In this case: what if the Franco-Prussian War never happened? What if there was nothing more to stand in the way of the French Empire? Add to that: what if the world's scientists began to disappear?

Of these scientists, two happen to be the protagonist's parents. Left with a priceless snowglobe, a love for science and a cat who can talk as a result of a failed experiment, April spends ten years stealing, sneaking and generally waifing-it-up around Paris trying to recreate her family's secret serum (the relevance of which I will leave up to the movie to detail).

April is not a spunky, Barbie-doll teenager but a much more down-to-earth personality who bears the weight of an orphan but is also weighed down as a citizen of the disgusting capital that Paris has become. The might of the French Empire was so hungry for fuel to fight its wars that it deforested the entire continent, belching so much smoke into the atmosphere that most Europeans wear gas masks in 1941 and the countryside has been turned into a grey wasteland. 

For April, the loss of her family and the destruction of the natural world might as well be the same thing: her first hopeful encounter in years happens at a memorial to the last tree and the journey to find her parents takes her away from the smoggy horror she's known for years. Her talking cat, Darwin, is the closest thing she has to a family member, and the smoke in the air is likely to take him from her too.

April charts an alternate history that results in, thanks to the lack of scientists, a world where electricity was never discovered and the burning of coal and wood is the only source of energy. Combined with the oppressive French Imperial regime, you have a recipe for classic steampunk.

Much like The Matrix and the genre of cyberpunk back in 1999, readers already familiar with this kind of setting might find the opening narration somewhat over-explanatory as to why April's world is this way. Most movie-goers, however, are less likely to take the preponderance of airships and chunky wood-fired machines for granted -- in which case this is the best introduction that one could ask for. Instead of treating the aesthetic as a fashion statement, April does a remarkable job of exploring both parts of the term "steampunk": an empire that needs fuel for its machines of war (the steam) and a dismal world where the only heroes are the outcasts and abnormals (the punks).

While its exploration of steampunk politics is a rare occurrence on film, the actual plot of April is pure old-fashioned adventure-romance, meaning not the lovy-dovy kind of romance but the two-fisted, derring-do kind. Taking inspiration from Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, Howl's Moving Castle, Raiders of the Lost Ark and even James Bond and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles at times, the film-makers clearly knew what they wanted to produce and who they were making it for. Often, thanks to the nearly perfect pacing, exciting action and silly slapstick, the movie seems to be blossoming out of pure love right before your eyes.

Is the plot predictable? Mostly, with a few minor exceptions. Do the villain/s plans seem far-fetched? Quite. Will the protagonists find themselves in a beautiful natural environment after spending the first half of the story in a smog-choked, overcrowded city? You bet! But accusing April of being unoriginal in these ways is as pointless as doing so to any of the aforementioned properties. Part of what makes something a "genre" in the first place is a set of guidelines and touchstones that are familiar to the audience, and April is no exception.

That said, if you happen to be sensitive to what Doug Walker (of the Nostalgia Critic) calls the "liar revealed" story¹, it rears its head in April, though it is downplayed to an extent: it's only so important to the characters until they next get into trouble (which as you might guess is quite often in a pulp adventure tale).

Strangely enough -- though I cannot be certain of how and when the production of April lines up -- there are multiple reflections, plot points and even visual motifs that seem to simultaneously evoke and rebuke last year's Tomorrowland. Perhaps it is from the overarching premise of disappearing scientists and the imminent death of the natural world. Even the villain/s motivations seem to expound upon and better rationalise the kind of character that the former film's Governor Nix became.

Regardless, while there are certain logistical questions left at the end of April that even the film admits may have gone a bit too far, it manages to tell a complete story in the way that Tomorrowland failed. Rather than a protracted first act and rushed conclusion, April goes to great lengths to provide a full beginning, middle and end. This is a movie that understands that an adventure (rather than say, a mystery story) needs the plot details to be doled out over the course of the story rather than dumped on the audience all at once in the climax.

Many of the fantastically staged action scenes wouldn't have had as much impact if the secrets had been withheld in this way -- and they really are fantastic. The aesthetic of the film is hands-down the best translation to animation of Tintin artist Hergé's pioneering "ligne claire" style (of which Jacques Tardi makes ample use in his work) that I have ever seen. I have not read many of Tardi's comics but I understand that his style also makes use of highly detailed backgrounds, another beautiful component of April's visual identity. The few conspicuous uses of 3D CGI are integrated as well as they can be and mostly just to maintain sensible proportions when depicting vehicles.

The biggest negative I have about April and the Extraordinary World is akin to one of the villain's core motivations: prejudice. That is, prejudice in the anglosphere against French films, and especially animated ones. When I showed the trailer to a friend earlier in the year, he remarked, "oh, an art film."

This is a movie that deserves to be as popular with kids and adults alike as any of the upcoming Dreamworks and Pixar projects, but like the stop motion extravaganzas of LAIKA is probably destined to be seen only as a cult classic. It has humour in abundance, wondrous sights, thrills and even manages to sneak in commentary on the importance of family.

April and the Extraordinary World is no Star Wars or How To Train Your Dragon -- the plot is maybe a tad too conventional -- but in a world with angry superheroes and lightspeed remakes or nostalgia grabs it allows the audience to have a different sort of adventure. It stands out from the norm, and that makes it extraordinary -- 4.0 / 5 Stars.

As they say in France, fin.

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1 That is to say, the rather overused device where a hero is caught in a deceit, and subsequently ostracised -- causing emotional turmoil in one or more characters who thought they could trust them -- even though the audience is well aware that the heroes will kiss and make up before the finale.

What I Want From Movies -- Part 1

(picture from letterboxd, movie social media)

Princess Mononoke. Terminator 2. The Dark Crystal. Mad Max: Fury Road.

Why are the four movies on my profile my "favourites"? For starters, there are a few elements that I love in movies more than all the craft in the world (though 'course, it always helps that the craft is good too):

-- Grand stories with relatable themes
-- Larger-than-life characters and epic drama
-- Fascinating worlds and beautiful visual composition

Lucky for me, there are a lot of movies that can offer at least one of these. Occasionally, it is why I'd rather watch a gangster picture than an actual science-fiction or fantasy movie -- I'll nearly always choose epic scope and dramatic story over cheap thrills. 

Sometimes it's even why I'll admit that a movie isn't perfect and still enjoy the heck out of it: see 2012 or 9.

... okay, it's a little weird that both examples I picked weren't really titles so much as numbers.

Moving on.

The point is that the movies I've said are my "favourites" have all three bullet points and more. If I could choose the movies that I'd make, or pick the movies that other people make -- these four would be the gold standard. "Make more like this," I say.

Oh and, before I get stuck into each of these points for today's movie: let it not be forgotten that there's a fourth, subsidiary element that I love in movies and that's a good score. Princess Mononoke certainly has that one down. While I've liked movies with bad musical scores, they never reach the top of the heap¹.

Princess Mononoke is a classic little-w "western" in the sense that it has a drifter-type character coming to a new town/city/land and (intentionally or unintentionally) becoming wrapped up in the local conflict just as it builds to a head. This conflict is, in all-but-a-few examples, between an upstart group of greedy and/or technologically superior humans and the incumbent culture -- aliens, first peoples, elves, you name it. 

Over the course of the story, the wandering knight, or gunslinger, or samurai, or former Confederate captain, or martial arts master in question will pick a side, or none at all, and change the conflict for good (though not always for the side he joined in the first place). This also makes Princess Mononoke a spiritual predecessor to Avatar, but as we will see, I think it does a much better job of exploring the nature of conflict and human relationships.

Okay, so the movie probably already has your attention with its basic plot setup: after all, it's rare that one of these never builds to an epic showdown -- sometimes over land, sometimes over ideologies, often over both. This pretty much guarantees that the first two elements I mentioned at the top are covered. 

Our wandering hero this evening will be played by Ashitaka, the last prince of a persecuted Japanese people, the Emishi. He is cursed and must leave his home to find a cure before it kills him -- and just for fun, I'll point out that the soundtrack for the first leg of his journey is actually titled "The Journey to the West", in case you weren't already sure what genre this epic story was going to be. 

Other larger-than-life characters include the spirits of the forest (which, despite the English translation, you must understand are not "gods" as the anglosphere thinks of them); Jigo, a shrewd merchant with very few morals; and the leader of the local humans, Lady Eboshi, who is not the kind of antagonist you might think she would be in a western story (this time also meaning European stories as opposed to eastern ones). 

Above all, San, the titular "Princess Mononoke" (aka. Beast Princess) is the most important character in the story, having been raised among the wolves of the forest and practically forsaken humanity. Her relationship to Ashitaka is more tense and passionate than any Pocahontas wannabe and doesn't go the direction you're expecting, either.

Ashitaka is unusual in this mix as he does not automatically side with the humans of Irontown, who the spirits of the forest are so keen to get rid of. Rather, as he says, he wants to see "with eyes unclouded by hate", and come to a mutually beneficial cease of hostilities. 

As one might imagine, this is particularly difficult when (most) men and beasts have viewed each other as enemies since the beginning of time. The unfolding of this story I will leave unspoiled, but suffice it to say that Princess Mononoke treats all of these ideas with due gravitas and even manages to show the shades of grey that Avatar forgot about around the time that Stephen Lang was cast as the big bad military villain.

The last element I mentioned up top might be even more prominent than the first two in this movie: Princess Mononoke creates an absolutely gorgeous world through the use of traditional animation and computer-enhanced multiple planes. Even the touch of mid-90s CGI is used deftly, leaving no elements dated by today's standards. The forest is mysterious, full of power but also danger, and Irontown as a new settlement has the nostalgic feel from stories of settlers in far-flung reaches of the world. Both primary settings are treated with a combination of heightened reality and down-to-earth empathy, meaning as the audience we don't want to see either of them destroyed.

Again, this is in contrast to the modern, American western where the colonists are always automatically seen as an unsightly blot on the landscape and the forest is depicted as blameless and nice.

Princess Mononoke is, additionally, an example of Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki in their prime, and one of the few cinematic fantasy/western films that is spoken of in the same breath as Star Wars. Everything about it is absorbing and strange, combining wondrous movie magic with thoughtful commentary on humanity's relationship with the natural environment. The only possible complaint I might have is that, from a perspective as a Christian, there is little-to-no discussion of the creator of this natural environment.

Hopefully this has given some insight into why I want more movies to be like the four I have picked to be my "favourites". Next time, we'll discuss what I think might be the greatest action movie of all time, Terminator 2: Judgement Day. What's that? I think Die Hard is trying to bash down my door, better go sort this out ...

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1 For instance, Once Upon a Time in China is an exciting and well-told movie from a certain point of view, but the music is far from the best that Chinese or Hong Kong films have offered.