Is it too early to announce the most beautiful film of 2009? It’s hard to imagine a more transporting cinematic experience than “Azur & Asmar,” an animated feature from French writer-director Michel Ocelot.
Any aficionado of animation — of vibrantly realized storytelling, in any genre — will be seduced by a wealth of sights and sounds.
The story is original, though thematic references range from Persian art and architecture and the “Arabian Nights” to Shakespeare’s “Pericles.”
In an unspecified Western land, two boys are raised as brothers. Asmar and his birth mother are strangers in a strange land, speaking both Arabic and English, making the best of their circumstances under the shadow cast by the taciturn, coldhearted master of the house.
The master’s son, Azur, adores his surrogate mother’s tales from her homeland of a magical sprite imprisoned in a cavern.
The boys’ relationship is thorny but hardy, full of fights and forgiveness. “I look like an angel,” says the fair, blue-eyed Azur. “My country is better than this place,” counters the Arabic-speaking Asmar. Then the dark-skinned mother and son are banished from the home.
Years later, Azur crosses the Mediterranean to find the dream land he relished through his surrogate mother’s tales. Shipwrecked, himself now a stranger in a strange land, Azur pretends to be blind — his blue eyes are considered evil by the locals — and makes an uneasy alliance with a beggar who serves as Azur’s introduction to this land of saffron and gorgeous tiles.
There’s plenty more, involving a confident princess (no passive archetype here), a reunion between Azur and Asmar and Asmar’s mother, a quest and some splendid leaps into fairy-tale realms populated by rainbow-colored oversize birds (the preferred mode of transport in this story’s later passages) and a bright red lion with even brighter blue claws.
Ocelot adapted his French- and Arabic-language film into English and Arabic, and in both versions the smattering of Arabic is not subtitled. It was the correct choice: As Azur feels his way through his disorienting surroundings, his confusion becomes ours.
Ocelot has cited France’s tortured relationship with Algeria as an inspiration for his story. Yet the storytelling is so vivid and sure, and the computer animation so fabulously brocaded and detailed, you never get that “good-for-you” taste. It’s a feast.
Gabriel Yared’s music is as subtly satisfying as Ocelot’s designs are fantastic. If more film music worked such atmospheric wonders, the world would be a better place.
Early in the story, Azur is struggling through lessons in fencing, riding and dancing. “What I ask for is grace,” sighs his dance instructor. “What I get is porridge.”
In any given year, a filmgoer consumes a lot of animated porridge. And then, occasionally, along comes a delicacy on the order of “Azur & Asmar.”
“Azur & Asmar”
Not rated but in the mild PG range. 1 hour, 39 minutes. In English with some Arabic. Written, directed and drawn by Michel Ocelot; music by Gabriel Yared; starring the voices of Steven Kyman, Nigel Pilkington, Suzanna Nour, Nigel Lambert, Imogen Bailey. Opens today at Starz FilmCenter.
