One of Vincent Van Gogh's most famous paintings, Starry Starry Night, takes a landscape countless have seen, and turns it into the extraordinary. This film followed through with that idea by making a fantastical world out of the ordinary. This film manages to paint its own picture of how reality and imagination can cross paths making the world seem a bit less cruel, especially through the eyes of two kids who are trying to find their place in the world.
This is a story about first love and the importance of childhood innocence. Both Mei and Jay, the main characters, have their separate problems at home, but they manage to get to know one another through their common curiosities and mutual love of art. Along with some great uses of computer generated effects, this film managed to merge reality with the surreal giving the whole film a fairytale feel.
The film ultimately was about two kids who both had reasons to be upset with life coming together to cope with it, but luckily there was still more offered to the story than just that. Much like how a fairytale can describe one's childhood, this is a film that follows the theme all about the fragility of innocence.
Keeping up with that theme, as odd as it may sound, one of the most frequent things that came to mind as I watched this film was that it seemed so delicate. It managed to create an atmosphere where if you were to so much as make too loud a noise, everything would shatter. This was made possible for a variety of reasons. this film doesn't have much dialogue at all. Words weren't necessary because it was really the soundtrack that did all the work to describe the emotions in the scenes.
The soundtrack was truly superb and was always calm and never felt overpowering, even when it was something so important. Most of music was slow moving changing between string instruments and the piano. Along with the slow moving story, it fit in perfectly. The story also had a strong focus on just the two kids. Although with Mei we got glimpses of how her parents were always fighting, we never understood why, and instead were just shown the effects it had on their daughter.
I appreciated this choice to focus the story just two characters. Too often do films try to get as much drama as they can in their plots by focusing on the problems everyone has, thus making a single person's pain seem meaningless. This was obviously not the case this time, and made the two stories the kid's had to tell have all that more of an impact on the audience.
This film seemed to be a near homage to European art and film. Many famous paintings by Van Gogh (obviously), Monet, and Degas made an appearance to all symbolise their own importance in the film. Mei's mother also had an obsession with all things from Paris, and although the mother's constant neglect and coldness towards her family was never really discussed, one could assume it was because she felt her own family was holding her back from her dreams.
One of the most prime examples that brought me to this conclusion, was the film's most clear homage to Bande à Part and in specific, the famous dance. A story where two people decide to run away together. This theme tied in well with the mother's wishes, but it worked well when they integrated it once again with the two kids who had no idea where the dance had come from, but it helped them to forget their own worries.
Point is, in a calm and delicate film like Starry Starry Night, its story may be simplistic, but once you scratch passed that surface, it has a lot more to offer. The story of love may not have been all that strong, but the story of two kids who are on the cusp of become teenagers and are trying to hold to what is left of their childhood is what I instead chose to notice, and that part of the story was truly handled with an elegance. So if you pay more attention to that aspect of the plot, along with the wonderful visuals, this is a worthwhile film to see.
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