annejimkes Review of The Boy and the World

The Boy and the World (2013)

Heart-warming yet confrontational story about an innocent boy in a not so innocent world.

[6 June 2016]

The simplistic and almost childish animation style of this film still manages to convince an adult viewer to believe in the existence of and get involved in the world that it is depicting. How is this made possible? The world we see on the screen is given life by the colorful and creative use of sound and music. Despite the fact that the little amount of dialogue in the movie is unintelligible, it does not mean that it bears no significance. The utterances of reversed Portuguese can still be interpreted in combination with the images and what we know of the story. Interestingly enough, these pieces of dialogue were not recorded in normal order and then reversed. In that case it would not sound as natural as it does now. This approach to the lack of real dialogue is supported by an interview with the director Alê Abreu in the Brazilian magazine Revista da Cultura. In this interview he explains that The Boy and the World actually emerged from the idea of an animated documentary called Canto Latino about the formation of Latin America until the period of dictatorships. This documentary would use music, such as the songs of protest from the 1960s and '70s, to guide the story. Instead, Abreu was inspired to make an animated fiction film which still used the principle of music as a guiding force behind the story. However, another motivation for the original use of dialogue is that the film is following the boy's perspective which causes the dialogue and other linguistic utterances to be a scrambled mass of (familiar) sounds. The boy experiences the world as a child who does not yet understand the harsh reality which his parents are well aware of. The intention to show the movie and the world through the boy's eyes is explicitly brought to the attention of the audience through the title of one of the film's theme songs Aos olhos de uma criança (In the eyes of a child) sung by the rapper Emicida. The entire story is connected by one single leitmotif in the score which is first played as source music by the father and then repeated to remind the spectator of the boy's goal during his adventure. This song also connects sound to image and creates an organic unity between the two sides of the medium. Whenever someone plays the song, colored bubbles appear and float into the sky. This visualization of music supports the story by forming a metaphor for the battle between the civilians and the military. One of the characteristics of the soundtrack, which attracted me to the discussion of this particular film, is the mixture of sound effects and musical elements. Some clear examples of this mixture of sound effects and music are the sounds of various animals, such as chickens, a butterfly, and a horse, but also the sounds of traffic which are mixed with the percussion and special sound installations, or even the sound of picking a flower which is replaced by the pluck of a violin string. This unexpected use of musical instruments gives more color and character to the images on the screen and also emphasizes the child's perspective on the world. The soundtrack was constructed with contributions from Naná Vasconcelos, Emicida, Barbatuques, and GEM (Grupo Experimental de Música). Especially Naná Vascocelos, Barbatuques, and GEM played an important role in the creation of music that could be either part of the score or part of the Foley, SFX, and ambiance, and even function as a musical kind of wallah, which adds a threatening undertone to the scenes of the military in the big city. All three bring their own style and expertise to the mix which creates an extremely original and creative sound. Naná Vasconcelos is a vocal artist and percussionist who even uses pots and pans to find the perfect sound for a scene. Both Barbatuques and GEM are groups of musically talented people. However, there is a big difference between the methods of both groups. While the Barbatuques musicians use body percussion and create rhythms with voice effects and different kinds of claps, snaps, and feet stamps, the GEM musicians use fantastical instruments and sound installations which are invented and created by themselves to create a perfectly customized and original sound. Thanks to the wide range bastidores (backstage) material displayed on the film's website, it is possible to see short clips of the production process of all these different artists and their individual music styles.