Today sees the release of the Blu-ray/DVD combo 4 pack of Fantasia and Fantasia 2000.  Fantasia was a movie whose brilliance I didn’t understand as a child, I only knew that I liked the vague memories I had of it.  Watching it again on Blu-ray I was actually impressed by it’s brilliance and how far ahead of its time it was, and the purpose of it.  Watching it again, I was completely enamored by the concept and I hope that Disney does more like this.

The film opens up with an orchestra assembling in that beautiful world of 1940 Technicolor (which looks utterly amazing in Blu-ray) and a narrator steps out and explains the concept.  Fantasia is different artists renditions of their impressions of music.  An orchestra is employed to simulate the experience of going to the symphony and that’s really what the movie is all about.  You’re going to the symphony and watching different artists interpret the movements of the music.  Sometimes it tells a story and sometimes it doesn’t.  I watched this with my kids and they were enamored by it, wanting to go to more symphonies if possible.  (They’ve been to a couple and they love silent films, so maybe they’re exceptions to the rule).

It makes me sad to see that Disney only attempted to use this formula once more and it was in 2000′s sequel.  It’s good, too, and also looks gorgeous in full 1080.  But this kind of film is perfect for kids of today.  It forces them to just sit and pay attention to beautiful music and imagery and hopefully get them to foster a healthy respect for classical music and art.

Another thing I was surprised by was that one of the pieces of music was set to imagery that showed the Big Bang Theory and single-celled organisms and their evolution into dinosaurs and the extinction of the dinosaurs.  The narrator, Deems Taylor, explained evolution and the Big Bang as both science and fact.  The fact that this wasn’t controversial in 1940, but would be unthinkable in today’s charged climate shows how far we’ve slid away from sense and reason in today’s world.  I mean, consider that…  What would happen if a Disney cartoon appeared today and talked about evolution as fact so casually?  There would be riots in the street.

I would recommend this film to any music lover, lover of animation, or film buff.  The animation and colors hold up strikingly and I want desperately to see Disney embark on more experiments of this nature.