Mythic Journeys

Truly Great Documentary
I'm a sucker for anything mythological--I've got a copy of Bulfinch over here, a stack of Joseph Campbell over there, and Calvino's "Italian Folktales" over thataway. So any documentary on mythology was going to grab my attention. But holding my attention can be a little trickier--and the Boes accomplish that in spades with this gem of a film. It's one of the rare, rare times when the ideas being expressed so sparked my imagination that I had to jump up and grab a notepad just to get half of it down before they moved on to something else.

But the movie really catches fire with the animation. And not just the Froud-designed stop-action film-within-a-film that everyone's talking about--there are other tales told here, each in a different style of animation, all of them luminous and wonderful. (And the extras on how it was all made are pretty great too.) I won't bother trying to explicate any of the specific themes because it's too much fun encountering them in the...

Extremely inspirational
I'm typically cynical about anything that is not proven-fact/black & white/brick & mortar, and I've definitely never been into mythology. After watching Mythic Journeys, I still can't say I'm a fan of mythology per se, but the ideas and philosophies that seem to inspire the movie - as well as the fictional characters and "real" individuals we're introduced to - were also inspiring to me and my family. The film itself is exceptionally done. It's extremely imaginative but still firmly rooted in reality. It's very engaging, thought-provoking and never "talks down" to its audience. The idea that I came away with after watching the movie is that you create your own reality, and that my reality is possibly as good a story - if not even better a story - than the best literature I've ever read. It's a fun and intriguing notion, and for that alone I rated it very highly.

From Idea to Form:
Everything in life is created twice: first in thought then in form. I watched the evolution of this project from almost the beginning to its completion. Sitting in the theatre for the premiere was a little like being at the birth of my first grandchild. While I didn't have anything to do with it directly, I loved watching the process. The brainchild of Stephen and Whitney Boe did not disappoint. I appreciated every moment of it, and each time I see it, I find something else to keep me engaged in conversation with myself. It is deep and delightful all at the same time.

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