The Greatest Film Achievements of All Time
Prompt — 7
If you peruse the various lists of greatest films of all time, you will be sure to see some consensus about the top 10 films. The most common film titles of note are things like Gone with the Wind, Casablanca and Citizen Kane. These lists have been compiled by online bloggers, movie critics, and general fan bases, all of which build off of the same lists over time with a few embellishments for artistic flair. If we accept these lists as a lock tight edict for future tastes, we miss out on the qualities afforded to the mind of a child. I do not reduce the importance of these films, for they all deserve recognition and clout; however, my selection of the top movies of all time would include the early Disney films Pinocchio and Bambi.
The purpose of film is to entertain, inform and inspire. It is a bonding of mediums that produces a special quality of consumable art that can be regurgitated and ensconced among the general population, surpassing generational restrictions. Literature, visual art, music, dance, speeches, spoken word, drama, comedy, horror, even poetry are all represented in this beautiful form of modern art. If this is the ideals of film, then Pinocchio and Bambi contain the archetypal passages of mankind and fix them to a spike before the masses.
Pinocchio was Walt Disney’s 2nd movie. It was filmed during WWII, in a time when man’s acceptance of evil as a construct of ancient conditions had started to erode. The story is an old adaptation of an Italian tale that ventured farther in the medium of animation than its predecessor Snow White. Pinocchio delved chest high into man’s condition of sin and atonement, catastrophe and sacrifice. As a genre, it struck notes of humor, drama and horror. The scene with the donkeys is still to this day one of the more frightening moments in film, driven by its message of the enslavement of sin and the social machine supported by the entrapment of the wayward man.
The other film of note is Bambi. The name conjures memories of nursery themed content. Even the term, Bambi, has been used to describe a soft man who is more child than grown up. However, if given more thought, the film offers the largest range of human emotion and vivid artistry. As animation, this film has been considered to be Walt Disney’s greatest achievement by critics and creators. Brought to the screen, is an adaptation of a Russian ballet that tells the narrative arch of life’s cruelty in the struggle to preserve itself. Many viewers grab the low-hanging fruit of man is evil to nature and preservation and constraint should be achieved in order to save ecosystems. This film was released before it was popular to hold the notion of the preservation of the planet, so that would be a lens we would view it from in modern day. But the concepts of the film lent itself to a deeper and more rich meaning.
The film demonstrates that life itself is full of wonder and cruelty. That innocence does not triumph over destruction but rather exists due to its proximity. The survival of a species requires the acceptance of the necessary evil to grow horns for the destruction of weaker traits. The death of his mother, one of the saddest moments in film, and the destruction of the forest at the end can be interpreted as man’s current involvement with nature is destructive. And that is an accurate statement. It is also more accurate to say that nature, with the inclusion of mankind, is both creative and destructive. That it is inevitable to find pain and suffering built into the mechanisms that foster maturity of a species and in there lies meaning and purpose.
