The Neverending Story

As a young child, The Neverending Story was one of those films that sparked my imagination and formed my creative aesthetic. Along with The Last Unicorn, Labyrinth, The Dark Crystal, and The Ewok Adventure, this film began my love of fantasy and the images from it have been cemented in my mind ever since. 

Last year, I finally read the book by Michael Ende on which the movie is based and ever since, I'd been meaning to re-watch the movie that I hadn't seen since childhood. I finally got around to doing that the other day. The strange thing is how familiar the movie still felt, as if I'd just watched it a few months ago instead of thirty years ago. That's a result of the multiple viewings. 

The thing about 80's premium cable channels was that they showed the same movies over and over again for months. So when there was one I liked,  I tended to watch it over and over again. This was one I'd watched countless times. The fact that I, and probably every boy my age, had a childhood crush on the Child Empress was responsible for a few of those viewings, I'm sure. Also, anything with animatronics in the 80's was cutting edge and captured children's imaginations like nothing else, except of course its cousin, animation. 

Watching this again as an adult, it brought back a lot of childhood memories, but not exactly the same excitement, unlike something like Star Wars does. There is something so incredibly PG about it that it's hard to love as an adult. The acting is also overdone, with Atreyu screaming every one of his lines. It's no wonder that Michael Ende HATED this film, but I don't think that's really fair. It's still a movie that I think would capture the imagination of a child. Now that I have a child, I'm going to be very interested in how she views these movies when she's old enough.

Fiction Friday (36)

It's been ages since I posted a book review, mainly because I've have very little time to read of late. Over the past few weeks, I've been reading a book I've wanted to read for a long, long time. While I love getting to read something that has been on my list for a long time, there's also a bit of disappointment in that there is now one less story to look forward to. It's also rare that I go into a book with expectations, except in cases like this. Sometimes they live up to it, sometimes not. That is the joy of discovery and this was a trip I enjoyed. 

The Neverending Story by Michael Ende
(1979)

As a child of the '80s, I was one of the vast number of kids who fell in love with this magical story through the power of film. Though I haven't seen it since my childhood, the images have stayed with my imagination. I'd been meaning to read the novel for ages, and finally got a copy as a gift for my birthday and dove right in.

This is one of those books that feels like two books in one. It's no surprise that the movie only covers the first half of the book. The second half of the book essentially begins a new story. After Bastian saves Fantastica by giving the Childlike Empress her new name, he physically enters the story in which he was reading. The novel switches gears from an adventure of courage and suspense, the story of Atreyu and his luckdragon, into one of self-discovery where the reader follows Bastian as he navigates the temptations and dangers of sudden power.

Bastian is a shy kid, dealing with the loss of his mother and a father made distant by his grief. Like a lot of children in such situations, he escapes into stories. When he actually enters the story and realizes he can have every wish granted, he of course wishes to be everything he is not. He wishes to be brave, dashing, wise, and feared. But the more he wishes to be somebody else, the more he forgets who he is, and he forgets how to love.

From a writing point of view, it's a brave journey to take the main character on as he becomes more and more unlikable, until the concluding action of course where all is corrected. Though it lacks the scope of some other fantasy books, falling more in line with the likes of "The Last Unicorn" than "The Chronicles of Narnia" this is certainly one of those thoroughly enjoyable stories that will entertain all ages.