Shrek and Donkey Arrive in Russia
After the Toronto Film Festival, I was flying home across the ocean. The plane took off into the short night, ready to unload its passengers in Europe just six hours later. Still shaken from the New York explosions, people hurried to catch a bit of sleep. But then the movie “Shrek” appeared on the screens. Sleep was forgotten: for almost the entire flight, passengers were shaking in their seats with laughter and emerged early in the morning feeling refreshed.
I was watching it for the second time since its triumph at Cannes, and I couldn’t sleep either – I was completely happy. That’s the special thing about this film: it makes babies and professors, business people and nuns happy. It’s about accepting ourselves as we are because there won’t be another facade, and we need to learn to see the beauty of the immortal soul. Like Donkey, voiced by Eddie Murphy in the English version. He performed alongside his long-eared partner because the film is drawn by people and computers. Animation, by the way, comes from the word “soul,” so it all makes sense.
Donkey saw the soul in the monster Shrek. Swampy, green, eats mice, and, as a monster, hates the whole world, although deep down he longs for love, but you have to see it. This is the first fairy tale where the main character is an ugly creature with trombone-like ears. Even in “Beauty and the Beast,” the main character was still a beauty, even in the serious “Les Misérables,” Quasimodo was in a supporting role, but here a knight awakens in an ugly creature. This is a crucial point for the authors. They insist that “Shrek” is “a story with a moral” because “things are not always what they seem.”
A Twist on the Classic Tale
As you might have guessed, this is another story about beauty and the beast. The evil Lord Farquaad plans to exile all fairy tale characters to Shrek’s swamp. Outraged by the invasion, Shrek, accompanied by the persistent Donkey, goes to the capital city of Duloc to deal with the offender. And along the way, he frees Princess Fiona, who is sleeping there like Snow White, guarded by a dragon. I won’t tell you how it ends. The film is very funny, and for all ages. Babies will be entertained by the Three Blind Mice and the Three Little Pigs, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, Peter Pan, Cinderella, the Big Bad Wolf, the Gingerbread Man, Mother Goose, Pinocchio, and “Mirror, mirror on the wall” all rolled into one. Everyone else also enjoys the constant and witty, almost parodic, crossovers with movie hits like “Austin Powers” and “The Matrix.”
Animation Revolution
These days, any new animation becomes a revolution in film technology and, consequently, film aesthetics. The Shapers computer program and the Oscar-winning Fluid Animation System (FLU) made it possible to develop the characters’ facial expressions and the movement of every hair on the donkey’s withers in detail. The realism of the picture is absolute, but it’s cheerful and comically exaggerated: FLU fell into clever hands. The so-called “facial animation system” worked strictly individually: the characters’ personalities and how they interacted with the movements of muscles and skin were entered into the computer, so the same command “Smile!” gave different results. The movement was transmitted in layers: from inside the hero, from his anatomically accurately constructed skeleton through the muscles to the skin and folds of clothing. The result is so unconditional that the animators were forced to back down a little – to preserve the feeling of a fairy tale.
The Team Behind the Magic
“Shrek” was made by the same team that made “Antz,” and it’s the debut for directors Andrew Adamson and Vicky Jenson. Screenwriters Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott are known for “Aladdin” and “The Road to El Dorado.” Mike Myers (Shrek) – an actor from Toronto who became famous after the “Austin Powers” films – was invited for the voice acting, as well as Cameron Diaz (Princess Fiona) and John Lithgow (Lord Farquaad). Not to mention Eddie Murphy, whose role as Donkey is considered almost the best in his career. “You never know what he’ll come up with on the recording,” says Vicky Jenson. “He followed the text, but presented it in such a way that we fell on the floor laughing.” It’s a pity we won’t hear it.
In its first two weeks of release in the United States, “Shrek” grossed $112 million, becoming the most successful animation in the world so far. And “DreamWorks” has already announced the start of work on the sequel, with the script being written by the same Terry Rossio and Ted Elliott. We’ll have to wait a long time: computer animation is a painstaking business, “Shrek-1” took five years to make. The long-term project includes the release of plush Shreks and donkeys, bottles of green ketchup, and “Shrek’s Swamp Fizz” soda. Drink and smile.