How to Train Your Dragon
A must watch this summer
First Take/Satyen K.
Bordoloi
Directors: Dean DeBlois,
Chris Sanders
Cast: Jay Baruchel, Gerard Butler,Craig Ferguson,
Merica Ferrera,
Jonah Hill.
Rating: 3.5 on a scale of 5
Running: In
most major cinema halls in India's
metros
The best thing about children’s stories is that they are actually commentaries on adults' affairs.
Beautifully veiled
inside metaphors, they are meant to instruct as
much as entertain. A good example is the
latest 3D Hollywood spectacle ‘How to Train
Your Dragon’. And it is as much a must-watch
for adults, as it is for kids.
Hiccup
is truly a hiccup. He disrupts others work with
his curiosity and over-enthusiasm. His father is
chief of a Viking village, which is peaceful but
for some pests – dragons, of all shapes,
sizes, colours and attitudes. They take
domesticated animals and destroy homes.
For 300 years the Vikings have been
waging a battle against them. And every kid,
including Hiccup, aspires to become a dragon
slayer like their parents. Once in a desperate
attempt to prove his worth, Hiccup shoots at a
deadly dragon called Nightfury that no one has
ever seen. The net hits the dragon, but no one
believes him.
The next day, while
taking a walk into the forest, he indeed finds the
trapped dragon. Ecstatic to prove his worth before
his father and bullying kids, he readies to kill
him. However, when he sees the animal resigned to
his fate, he cannot and instead sets him free.
The Dragon has damaged his fin and cannot
fly away, nor catch food. Over time, Hiccup takes
care of him, builds him an artificial fin, and
learns to fly on the dragon. All this he does even
as he trains to kill dragons in his village.
A child, it is said, is the father of man.
Hiccup discovers that a little kindness and
compassion can do what 300 years of war has not
managed to do. Sadly, his warring father does not
think so. He uses the captured dragon to launch a
war against them and finish them forever.
‘…Dragon’ is as much an
indictment of war, and warring mentality of
adults, as it is of a feel-good, extremely
detailed, entertaining and spectacular animation
work. Often the wisdom that visits children is
missed by adults.
The film makes a
mockery of the concept of an ‘enemy’
and the adult propensity to solve any problem with
brute force and annihilation of the enemy. When
the truth is that the real enemy that prevents us
from a peaceful existence is our own impatience
and lack of compassion to those that are not like
us.
Based up the Hiccup series of books
by British author Cressida Cowell, the film uses
the latest in animation to give a joyride to the
viewers. The detailing in the film inspires a
second viewing. And hopefully a sequel will follow
soon.
The cast is good. Gerard Butler,
being Scottish himself, is perfect as the Viking
chief. Jay Baruchel as Hiccup is good. But the
best thing about the film is the sensitive
direction of Dean DeBlois and Chris Sanders. They
know when to speed up the pace and when to
meditate on important moments. Not many directors
have that vision.
The problem with most
children is that they grow up to be like their
parents, forgetting the stories of their childhood
and the lessons of kindness and compassion these
stories espoused. Thankfully, there always will be
books and films like ‘…Dragon’,
to remind us of how we truly were and can be in
the clutter of what we have become –
ruthless and impatient.
