Movies |
The Red Balloon
directed by Albert Lamorisse
By
Published: Jan 09, 2023
Category:
Drama
It’s amusing to read Web reviews of “The Red Balloon.” I gather that, in the Before Times, many American 4th to 8th graders saw the movie in school. Which makes sense — at 34 minutes long, it’s just long enough to kill an entire period. The teacher doesn’t have to teach.
Maybe if the teacher had said something — maybe if “The Red Balloon” were shown as an example of metaphor and dreams and the power of imagination, and that dreams and imagination are Good Things — kids would have loved it. But apparently nothing of the kind was said. And so the story of a French kid in the mid-1950s who is followed around by a balloon seems to have agitated dozens of Americans so much that, decades later, they rush to post their hatred of it. (I did note: The movies haters were all male.)
The fact is — and excuse me for talking as if quality were objective, observable fact — that this little film is a gem, eminently worthy of its Academy Award for Best Short Film in 1956 and its reputation as one of the Great Films Ever.
But don’t take my word. Show it to a kid, the younger the better. Twenty-odd years ago, when he was two, my stepson first saw “The Red Balloon.” He soon knew the boy’s name — Pascal — and groaned and cheered at the appropriate times. And wore out the video before he was tired of it. Later, our daughter watched it. Over and over again. For her, too, Pascal is a friend. [To watch the trailer of the film, click here. To buy or stream it on Amazon, click here. To watch the movie — free!!! — on YouTube, click here.]
What do they see in the story of a French boy and his balloon? Not what we do. They don’t, I believe, see that the boy — an only child — is lonely, and that the red balloon becomes his best friend. They don’t see the restricted, imagination-challenged world of adults, where a balloon that a follows a boy is an annoyance. They don’t see the boys who gang up on Pascal and burst his balloon in a show of brute force and group stupidity. Nor do they see the flock of balloons that show up at the end and take Pascal flying over Paris as the liberation of art and imagination.
No, for kids, “The Red Balloon” is a film set in reality. A boy has a balloon for a friend. Period. Later, he has many balloons for friends. Period.
And that is the magic of the movie — it hits kids at their level. A level where anything is possible. Where magic is afoot every day. And that places “The Red Balloon” up there with “Wizard of Oz” and “E.T.”
Got a kid? Show her/him “The Red Balloon.” And, in case you’ve misplaced it, reclaim your own sense of wonder.
(with thanks to MEH)
