Inkheart (film)

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Movie
German title Ink heart
Original title Inkheart
Inkheart Film Logo.jpg
Country of production United States , Germany , Italy , United Kingdom
original language English
Publishing year 2008
length 106 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
JMK 10
Rod
Director Iain Softley
script David Lindsay-Abaire
production Iain Softley
Cornelia Funke
Diana Pokorny
music Javier Navarrete
camera Roger Pratt
cut Martin Walsh
occupation
synchronization

Inkheart is a fictional film based on the novel of the same name by Cornelia Funke with elements of fantasy . It was shot by Iain Softley for New Line Cinema and opened in German cinemas on December 11, 2008. The main roles are Brendan Fraser and Eliza Bennett seen as the father Mo and daughter Meggie.

action

Mortimer Folchart, known as Mo, finds the very rare book Inkheart in a Swiss antiquarian bookshop . His old friend Dustfinger is also after the book and wants to steal it from Mo, but he and his daughter Meggie can flee to her great-aunt Elinor. She is a book collector and takes them both in a somewhat unfriendly manner. Dustfinger follows them and ambushes them with the help of ink-smeared men who set the library on fire and kidnap the family to the fortress of their master Capricorn.

It turns out that Mo is called “magic tongue” because he can use his voice to read objects and people from books, which then appear in reality. At the same time, a real person disappears into the world of the book. This also happened nine years earlier when Mo read from the book Inkheart to his wife Resa . At that time, the villains Capricorn and Basta and the fire-eater Dustfinger appeared with his marten Gwin, who had only appeared in the story until then, while Resa and her two cats disappeared between the pages. That's why Mo has been looking for the book since then so that he can "read it out" again. In addition, he had promised Dustfinger that he would read it back into the book so that he could meet his family again in the world of Inkheart . There are other people who have skills similar to Mo, but none of them read as flawlessly as he does. With the stuttering Darius, Capricorn employs such a reader, who has read out Capricorn's henchmen with mutilations and similar “mistakes”. They all have ink writing on their faces, a sign of their origins and the unsuccessful transfer into reality.

In Capricorn's fortress, Mo is forced to read from the Arabian Nights to retrieve treasures from the story Ali Baba and the forty robbers . Farid, one of the robbers, suddenly appears. Capricorn takes Inkheart , burns it, and everyone is locked in the dungeon, in which a unicorn, flying monkeys from The Wizard of Oz , the crocodile from Peter Pan and other mythical creatures eke out their existence. With the help of Dustfinger and the hurricane from The Wizard of Oz , which Mo hails, all five can escape. However, Elinor has had enough of adventure and so she goes to the next train station to make her way home.

The rest of the group goes to Fenoglio, the author of Inkheart , in search of another copy of the book. Fenoglio finds his manuscript in the attic . Dustfinger tells Mo that he saw Resa a few hours ago in Capricorn's fortress. Darius had read her out shortly before, but she lost her voice because of his inferior skills. She is kept as a slave in the kitchen. Mo and Dustfinger want to save them and set off again in a car to the fortress. Farid is hiding in the trunk because he has found a friend in Dustfinger whom he does not want to leave.

Capricorn kidnaps Fenoglio and Meggie through his henchman Basta. Meggie also has the ability to use a magic tongue, which she discovered by chance when the dog Toto from The Wizard of Oz suddenly stands in front of her while she reads the story aloud. Capricorn now wants to abuse it to bring his dark ally from Inkheart , the "shadow", into reality. After this ceremony, the shadow will devour Fenoglio and Resa as sacrifices. Capricorn has kept a copy of the book especially for this. Fenoglio invents an alternative ending to the story, in which the shadow loses its power in order to avert the disaster.

Mo, Dustfinger and Farid succeed in a diversionary maneuver, but the shadow has already appeared. Despite Fenoglio's new ending, he's powerful and scary. In her need, Meggie hastily invents new sentences in which Capricorn crumbles to dust and the shadow and the other figures dissolve. Elinor has changed her mind about her journey home and is also returning to the fortress, where she frees the mythical creatures. To give Meggie enough time to write down and read the sentences, she stirs up the crowd. After all, Meggie's sentences lead to the fact that all villains disappear and the mythical creatures return to their original stories.

Resa gets her vote back and Mo finally releases Dustfinger to Inkheart . In the meantime he has learned from Fenoglio that he will die at the end of the book, but he believes that he can prevent this and that he does not depend on his "creator". In addition, according to Fenoglio, his death would have happened during a rescue of Gwin, which is not read back. In the ink world he meets his great love Roxane again.

production

Balestrino, the location of many scenes

The production of the film required a production cost of about $ 60 million. Overall, the film grossed about $ 62.5 million. The shooting location was largely the Ligurian town of Balestrino . The village center was largely abandoned about forty years before filming began due to an impending landslide. As a result, the place is characterized by gray and abandoned stone houses. The location is dominated by a medieval castle.

The author of the template had considerable say, which she had secured early on. The end of the film differs from the original book, however, because test screenings showed that the audience wanted a happy ending .

synchronization

Reviews

Thomas Binotto wrote that the film offers "106 entertaining minutes" and it should be noted on the positive side that Iain Softley did not " roll out the film to the fantasy standard of 150 minutes". The actors convinced with sovereign play. In the fantasy genre, the film does not particularly stand out or fall, but what is fascinating is “the interplay between reality and fiction, the osmosis between literature and life”. The choice of location paints a "pale, picturesque picture of Italy", the location would offer a realistic background with fantastic potential.

Thomas Klingenmaier judged that Inkheart was an "extremely hectically edited adventure film", in which the speed of the cuts could not override the "uninspiring design of the scenes". The film is characterized by “shortness of breath and manic urgency”. The director faced the same problem as Wolfgang Petersen in his film The Neverending Story : Reading should be celebrated. But Ian Softley had "misunderstood Cornelia Funke's poetic-art-democratic book template [...]".

David Gaertner notes: “If you attribute Inkheart [...] to a genre, the absurdity of this computer effects spectacle becomes particularly clear. As a fantasy film, Inkheart lacks one thing above all else: Fantasy. "And further" This is a particular shame, because the ensemble of Inkheart in particular goes to great lengths to fight against the insignificance of the script, which continues in Iain Softley's uninspired staging. Unfortunately, you can only lose there. "

The lexicon of international films wrote that the film was a "high-profile adaptation of the fantasy novel", which "but rather breathlessly rushes the inadequately explored characters through the plot". Thus was Inkheart a "trick technically perfect, but scenically sometimes bumpy reacted film that lacks despite some charismatic characters of emotional strength."

Others

According to her own statements, the author does not perceive the filming of a book as a translation of the text into a graphic representation, but sees the change by the director as a positive act of artistic creation even if the content of the book and its message are changed. Therefore, she sees in the fact that the film does not make any move to reproduce the depth of the text through faithfulness to the plot, but to portray relevant scenes completely differently, or the fact that the role of a 12-year-old is portrayed by an almost adult actress not as a disadvantage, but even as an advantage, since in her opinion it does not matter who plays a role, but only how he portrays it - just as in opera no one is interested in the roles of young men and tender virgins would be performed by more sedate singers with pronounced voices.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. Release certificate for ink heart . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , October 2008 (PDF; test number: 115 199 K).
  2. Age rating for ink heart . Youth Media Commission .
  3. Andrea Lammert, "Inkheart" and the village of villains , Welt Online from December 9, 2008 .
  4. Cornelia Funke and the duty of happy ending (interview with Cornelia Funke), Welt Online from December 9, 2008 .
  5. Thomas Binotto, material for story addicts, NZZ Online from December 11, 2008 .
  6. Thomas Klingenmaier, ink heart pounds too fast , RP-Online from December 11, 2008 ( memento of the original from December 14, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.rp-online.de
  7. www.critic.de
  8. Inkheart. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 20, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used