The Neverending Story (1984)

This review includes full spoilers. Proceed accordingly. For other movie reviews from me, click HERE:

Dusty: [After every typo] They look like big, good, strong hands, don’t they? I always thought that’s what they were.

Rating: PG
Director: Wolfgang Petersen
Writer: Wolfgang Petersen, Herman Weigel, Michael Ende
Stars: Barret Oliver, Gerald McRaney, Chris Eastman, Noah Hathaway
Release Date: July 20, 1984
Run time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

THE PLOT:

from wiki

Bastian Balthazar Bux is a shy boy who lives with his widowed father. One morning, Bastian’s father tells his son of his concern after hearing he daydreams in school and tells Bastian he needs to stop. On his way to school, Bastian is chased by bullies, and escapes by hiding in a bookstore. He meets the owner, Carl Conrad Coreander, and Bastian’s interest in books leads him to ask about the one Mr. Coreander is reading, The Neverending Story, but he advises against reading it. With his curiosity piqued, Bastian secretly takes the book. Arriving at school late, Bastian hides in the building’s attic to read.

The book describes the world of Fantasia, a fantasy realm that is slowly being destroyed by a malevolent force called “The Nothing”. Messengers are heading to the Ivory Tower to seek help from The Childlike Empress. To their dismay, they learn that she has fallen ill. The young warrior Atreyu is tasked with discovering a cure for her illness in order to save Fantasia. Atreyu is given an amulet called Auryn that can guide and protect him in the quest. As Atreyu sets out, a wolf-like being named Gmork is sent to kill Atreyu.

Atreyu’s quest leads him to seek the advice of Morla, the Ancient One, in the Swamps of Sadness. While making their way through the swamp, Atreyu’s horse Artax is overcome by the sadness and sinks into the swamp, leaving Atreyu to continue alone. Morla, being a prisoner in the swamp, can’t assist Atreyu and doesn’t have the answers he seeks, but directs Atreyu to the Southern Oracle, ten thousand miles distant. Gmork closes in as an exhausted Atreyu begins to sink into the swamp before being saved by the Luck Dragon Falkor, who takes him to the home of Urgl and Engywook, two gnomes who live near the gates to the Southern Oracle. Atreyu just manages to make it through the first deadly gate but at the second gate, a mirror reveals an image of Bastian reading the book. Atreyu eventually meets the Southern Oracle, who tells him that the only way to save the Empress is to find a human child who lives beyond the boundaries of Fantasia to give her a new name.

In flight, Atreyu is knocked from Falkor’s back by the Nothing, losing the Auryn in the process. He wakes on the shore of some abandoned ancient ruins, where he finds several murals depicting his adventure, including one of Gmork, who explains that Fantasia represents humanity’s imagination and is thus without boundaries, while the Nothing is a manifestation of the loss of hopes and dreams. Gmork lunges at Atreyu who slays him with an improvised weapon as the Nothing begins consuming the ruins.

Falkor manages to retrieve Auryn and rescue Atreyu. Later only small fragments of Fantasia remain in a starry void. Fearing that they have failed, they come upon the Ivory Tower intact. Inside, Atreyu reports he failed the Empress, but she assures him that he has brought to her a human child who has been following his quest. She explains that Bastian has been following Atreyu’s adventures. He has become a part of the story they are all sharing in. As the Nothing begins to destroy the Tower, Atreyu is knocked unconscious. The Empress pleads with Bastian to call out her new name in order to save Fantasia. Filled with doubt, Bastian declines to believe any of it could be happening. After she implores him directly to call out her new name, he runs to the window of the attic and calls out her new name: “Moonchild”.

The Empress presents Bastian with a grain of sand, the last remnant of Fantasia. The Empress tells him that he has the power to bring Fantasia back with his imagination. Bastian re-creates Fantasia and flies on Falkor’s back to see the land and its inhabitants restored, including Atreyu and Artax. When Falkor asks what his next wish will be, Bastian brings Falkor to the real world to chase down the school bullies. The film narrates that Bastian had many more wishes and adventures before returning to the ordinary world but that is another story.

My Review

When you visit a book or a movie created for an audience of children, you have to view things through the lens of the art’s intention. I had to sit with my reaction to The Neverending Story for a long while after viewing it to decide how I really felt about it. What was writer / director Wolfgang Petersen saying and what did he want us to hear? He was admonishing children not to be consumed with cares, worries, and grief, but instead to protect that hopeful, innocent, and imaginative parts of themselves.

When we meet Bastian, at the breakfast table with his father, we are almost punished by the uncomfortable lifeless quiet of their kitchen as they talk. His father is sharing the concern of a teacher that the boy spends too much time in school daydreaming and not enough time learning. Hanging like a fog over this conversation is the recent death of the boy’s mother. Shortly after, we find out that Bastian is not only grieving his mother, he’s also being pretty relentlessly bullied. We see three feral Gen X boys throw Bastian into a city dumpster and then try to return him to that dumpster after he climbs out.

The story then jumps in to present a choice. Grieve, cope, and preserve hope and innocence through the escapism of books and stories. Or be consumed by the nihilism and hopeless nothingness of adulthood. The answer that the viewers are guided to pick by the film is the one with the books and movies. Is this a false choice? That’s the question I chewed on for a long time in deciding how I felt about the film. Shouldn’t there be a path wherein you exist in the adult world, learn math, and also survive “the nothing” as well? The adult we meet who told Bastian about The Neverending Story did not strike me as being a great role model. He was presented as a recluse who avoided the world around him inside his shop. He wasn’t a hopeful competent adult but an old child persisting in an aged body.

I prefer a moral philosophy and an emotional health standard that both encourages adulthood and celebrates imagination and hope. I don’t know if that’s what we get here and that’s left me not knowing how to feel.

I was pleasantly surprised at how well the four decades old special effects looked. There was some obvious use of green screen for the rides on Falcor the Luck Dragon, but the bulk of the special effects were just incredibly well-done costuming, make-up, and practical effects work. I also enjoyed the aesthetic. That creators could have gone out of their way to make elements of Fantasia “cute” or marketable as toys, but instead it opted for occasionally unsettling realism. The choice made the film feel more immersive.

The music was good, but not remarkable. That said, the theme is an absolute earworm. I’ve been singing it to myself for days.

The adult critique I have of the film is that its pacing felt incredibly rushed. I remembered the sinking of Atreyu’s horse, Artax, in the swamp as a quintessential childhood film trauma, but while watching this as an adult, my reaction was that I’d barely had time to know Artax existed before I lost him. I hadn’t had time to care, yet. I think this speaks to the difference between kids and grown-ups. When you’re a child, you don’t need to be given a reason to care about the horse to deeply mourn his loss. You just need to know he existed. As an adult, my emotions wanted a reason. (Maybe I’ve been partially or wholly consumed by the ‘Nothing’ of which the film warns.)

Overall, my reaction to watching The Neverending Story was pretty mixed. I definitely enjoyed the look of the film and the feelings of nostalgia that it stirred up. The story within a story is still a really fun twist that holds up today. I think this is a pretty safe movie to show kids today, provided you spoil the Artax swamp scene and give some reassurances about things ultimately turning out well. I don’t know how I feel about the philosophy of the film itself. Bastian was a boy who had real problems and the film’s answer to those real problems was seemingly to encourage escaping from them rather than to face and overcome them. On the other hand, the fantasy fulfillment of riding a dragon that looks like a dog, and chasing down bullies might offset any of the morality failings of the story. You’ll have to let me know where you land on all of that.