Disneyland - Mon vieux pays natal
Arnaud des Pallières
France | 2001 | 46 min
Language : French
Full immersion in one of the world’s most famous non-places: the Disneyland theme park. This commissioned film, made at the request of the Arte channel for their ‘Voyages, voyages’ series, became transformed in the making into a very atypical and intriguing ‘cinematographic artefact’: a work that speaks of confusion, cynicism and folly, but also of a longing for love that drives us on.
Like millions of other people, Arnaud des Pallières sets off to visit one of the world’s most famous non-places: the Disneyland theme park. Over the almost commonplace images of a home movie (the footage is reworked to give it a grainy old-time quality and jerky rhythm), the film-maker tells a number of stories: the classic tale of the Pied Piper of Hamlyn, a theory about big dippers, the trades-unionist claims of Dingo, a Kipling novel, the death of Mickey Mouse, a robot portrait of the author. Rediscovering his childlike amazement at the mystery of the world, the ‘I’ of the narrator becomes a ‘we’ reflecting on life and adulthood (“a far less private, more political ‘I’”, AdP). The film, originally commissioned by the ARTE channel for their ‘Voyages, voyage’ series, gradually metamorphosed into an atypical but intriguing cinematographic artefact: a philosophical essay that speaks of confusion, cynicism and folly, but also of a longing for love that drives us on.
Luciano Barisone (Translation BMP Translations)
