Is it the form, the ballet, or just me? I ask because I really am giving pure ballet the fairest shake I can manage when watching these films predicated on capturing the dances above telling a story, but there's something in their construction which leaves me incapable of engaging to the degree I'd like, and ending up kinda bored. With the Bolshoi production we watched to start this holiday project, such issues weren't a problem, what with it serving as my introduction to the piece and the form on stage in general, and also its being an introductory piece viewed more as context than a work unto itself. With Nutcracker: The Motion Picture, there's just enough of the stuff I know about moviemaking and conventional narrative-based storytelling for me to get acquitted and start settling in for a proper watch, only for the film to shift into pure dance for a solid forty minute period, with very little in the way of prior narration or contextualizing shots to string it along. My eyes glaze over, and I have a highly difficult time getting back into the swing of things. Hence my question: is it my inexperience with the technical side of ballet that means I cannot adequately discuss and analyze large portions of the movie in the proper manner, the fact that The Nutcracker will almost always transform into exhibition rather than story when bound to Tchaikovsky's compositions, or am I simply not a ballet person?
However y'slice it, I struggle in finding an overarching perspective to use as framework for this review. It is, then, perhaps inevitable I finally break down and rely on my old friend, Bullet Pointing The Review For The Sake Of Getting It Done And Not Sitting Round Without Writing Anything For Another Goddamned Day. Little as I like calling their assistance, they're quite handy when invited over. So, let's disjointedly discuss!
- Per the Wikipedia page, director Carroll Ballard thought Godfather Drosselmeyer a creepy character without a sympathetic angle, and elected to change this by giving him more focus throughout the film. His methods for doing this involve affording Drosselmeyer an extended montage wherein he conceptualizes and crafts all the ballet's players, sets, and props before falling asleep as a miniature stage opens on Clara's dream; filming Drosselmeyer's dancer in close-up and emphasizing his desire for Clara's attention during the Christmas party scenes; and positioning a dream version of Drosselmeyer as not only mischevious imp in the background of act 1's back half and select portions of act 2, but an actively intervening figure who serves as taskmaster over the dancers in the Land of Sweets, and seems to covet Clara's hand in marriage over the Nutcracker's. If any of this is meant to immediately and obviously clear away the pedophilic underpinnings inherent to the work's exploring a preteen's sexual awakening by way of her creepy godfather's attentions, I don't quite see how. No matter how much Clara's narration insists she loved Drosselmeyer as a paternal figure despite all the times he's distressed and frightened her, all we as the audience see is the frightening parts, and a dream version whose advances and machinations recast otherwise delightful dances as insidious attempts to steal Clara away from the other, far more valiant suitor. That one can read the Nutcracker Prince as a stand-in for Clara's innocent romanticism doesn't help Drosselmeyer's case, nor does the fact that he's acted as a vaguely concerning person on all three levels of the film's reality. I read the director saying "sympathetic," but all I see is "more overtly villainous."
- The above said, I think Ballard's other attempts to make the movie more cinematic do function fairly well, particularly his conception of the war between toys and mice. The Pacific Northwest Ballet's production already looks to have involved quite a lot've moving parts to achieve the classic effect of the set and its prominent Christmas tree growing around Clara, and subsequently swarming the stage with a large number of bodies dressed as toy and mice soldiers. Ballard gives the whole thing a nice boost with some highly intricate effects work that's still grounded in the props and possibilities of a stage production, and adds in an ever-mutating Mouse King who physically grows and shifts behind the cuts to become this thirty-foot tall, six-headed (almost seven, give me SEVEN, dammit!) monster by the sequence's end. I've no idea if Ballard or Kent Stowell and Mauriece Sendak (choreographer and production designer on the stage production) came up with the Nutcracker's dancer running round in a gigantic mascot head for the battle scene, but whoever did so had a killer idea. It photographs really well on film, and the clumsy, leaping movements it draws from the dancer gives the Nutcracker a great deal of personality, far beyond the generic prince he becomes for act 2. The bit with Clara and the Nutcracker crawling into the Mouse King's gigantic discarded robes also makes a good effect.
- Despite the Christmas party sequence being shot on a set with enough coverage to establish a firm set of filmic fourth walls all round, I'd call it a good decision for Ballard to have leaned into his material's stage origins more and more as the film goes on. The battle sequence, once through with its shifting, expanding props, takes place in a great black void somewhere between film and stage in nature, and once Clara and the Nutcracker Prince fall in love during the snowflake dance, their surroundings look far more like a theatrical production, painted backdrop and all. When the film makes a shift to act 2, it employs the classic waving bits of cardboard water effect on a grand scale to achieve the look of Clara and the Prince sailing to a grand palace, and then stages the vast majority of the following dances on an obvious stage. Think the way Gilliam shot the play portions of The Adventures of Baron Munchhausen, straight on with the curtains and the surrounding area clearly visible, the lights plainly just off-camera. Doing this builds an understanding amongst the audience about diving deeper into a dreamscape whilst embracing the stage's ability to feel more believably unreal than anything too concretely cinematic, and personally gives me something to appreciate while failing to engage with the dancers.
- In view of the above, I'm not quite sure the opening dream sequence was quite the best idea. It takes the form of Clara tossing in fits in her sleep as blue-screened versions of herself, her younger brother, an ambiguous prince, and a mouse dance and fight their way across her mattress. Clever, but not quite in line with how the film proceeds otherwise, and a bit of a dead end for anything other than unsettling the audience after a series of scenes that have already done the same. The film takes its time getting into anything familiar, and while I can appreciate the impulse in trying to make this The Creepier Take on The Nutcracker, the music and dances otherwise carry on like we're working a more conventional angle, so the early and uncharacteristic nature of this dream both throws the pace off balance and contributes to a bit of (I suspect) unintended tonal dissonance.
- I can confirm after this viewing, the Arabic dance DOES go on substantially longer than the surrounding three other cultural dances. Still absolutely no idea why Tchaikovsky wrote it that way, and in this production its length does no favors to the bird-plumage-leotarded solo dancer's efforts in a moment when I'm already struggling to stay in the film. The Chinese and Russian dances, however, do benefit from its length, as the already surprising and delightful bit of a squat lion-costumed man being used as a maypole by many children, and the three bounding, shirtless, gold-spackled black dancers woke me right the hell up more than I suspect the same material would've with a less lengthy lead-in.
- Regardless of how little I know of ballet, regardless of how ill-able I am to discuss its particulars and the details of the dancers' efforts (I know absolutely nothing of positions, job names, or technique descriptions), and even knowing a filmic production like this would be able to run multiple takes and not do it all in one go, the strength and skill involved in making Clara and the Nutcracker Prince's final, triumphant dance work is stunning and admirable all the same. Finishing it with a quick return to the bobble-headed regular Nutcracker gives me a nice last reason to smile as well.
I've no pretty bow to tie this all up with, no elegant package to box it within, but I hope the above is at least adequate reading. Writing about Nutcracker: The Motion Picture in full would doubtlessly devolve into my whinging about how bored and unentertained I am by a medium I rarely imbide, and doing so seems so out of spirit for the project and season. I'd far rather run the risk of making little sense by dancing round a few bullet-pointed ideas than ram through a conventionally-styled review in which I let my ignorance of how to talk about much of the film's contents dominate. Knowing how, unfortunately, 1993's The Nutcracker is also primarily filmed ballet fills me with a bit of dread, but if we need to invite my overly-long-named friend to get through that too, so be it. Just so long as there's something interesting to talk about.
3.5/5
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