Robert Connolly’s adaptation of Alison Lester’s beloved children’s book Magic Beach is a beautifully imperfect production, shirking the straight lines, smooth curves and spit-polished surfaces so ubiquitous in mainstream kids’ movies. Separated into 10 chapters, each taking inspiration from a different page from the book and animated by a different Australian artist, it’s an ode to the purity and tactility of handmade visual expression, underpinned by an implicit belief that great art isn’t about drawing inside the lines or measuring distance between compositional elements. Connolly et al have created a work of vibrant messiness.
There’s always an intellectual distance between a youngster’s mindset and that of the adult film-maker creating content for them. But here this gap feels slimmer, the animators (Emma Kelly, Pierce Davison, Simon Rippingale, Marieka Walsh, Lee Whitmore, Kathy Sarpi, Susan Danta, Eddie White, Jake Duczynski and Anthony Lucas) deploying aesthetics – spanning a range of styles, including traditional illustration and stop-motion – that are genuinely childlike. The shapes and textures of the film, which is intended primarily for preschoolers, are styled as if they’ve popped out of a youngster’s head and danced on to the screen.
This lovely idea of tapping into a young person’s daydreams is reflected in the narrative, too. Preceding each chapter is a live-action introduction in which Lester’s source material is read aloud to a child, who is then transported to the titular location. The first time this happens, a mother brings a copy of the book to her son – “look what I’ve found, this used to be your favourite,” she says – who soon finds himself at the beach. Or as Lester put it: “at our beach, at our magic beach, [where] we swim in the sparkling sea …”
When his head goes under the water the film segues into the first chapter, illustrated with pastel-like textures by Emma Kelly, whose cinematic work includes the animated sections of Sarah Watt’s 2005 classic Look Both Ways. Kelly conjures the surreal sight of a young boy riding a horse underwater: a counterpoint perhaps to that terribly distressing scene from The NeverEnding Story in which another resplendent white horse dies (hello, childhood trauma!) after slipping into “the swamp of sadness”. Here, the mighty mammal rides eternal.
The rest of the film is a swirl of visions rather than a plotted narrative. Another animal features prominently in a subsequent section: Lester’s real-life jack russell-dachshund cross Bigsy, who gets his own animated daydream, wolfing down a string of sausages handed to him by a butcher. This one is illustrated in a wonderfully globby style by Lee Whitmore – lots of large, chunky, painterly strokes and smudges.
Having read Magic Beach many times to my two-year-old son, I waited with interest for the appearance of rum-hauling smugglers, which are memorably referenced on one page (“A beacon is signalling up on the cliff, an answer blinks from the bay / Smugglers are hauling in crate-loads of rum, then silently stealing away”). It didn’t disappoint: stop-motion whiz Anthony Lucas conjures a fabulously clumpy look, with notes of Aardman and Adam Elliot. Another chapter, animated by Eddie White, brought to my mind Yoram Gross’ classic Dot and the Kangaroo in its use of illustrated elements superimposed on live-action backgrounds.
The anthology structure is a good fit for kids, its piecemeal format accommodating short snackable viewing sessions – perhaps before parents declare “dinner time!” The variety of animated styles, coupled with the dominance of the beach setting, got me contemplating how nature inspires countless narratives and forms of expression; gauging how many, or how great the impact, would be like trying to measure the space between now and infinity. This is a film about nature and creation; the amazing world around us and the art we use to reflect its awesomeness.
Magic Beach is in cinemas from 16 January
