Empire Australasia - 04.2020

Getty Images

AN ACQUIRED TASTE

KOKO-DI KOKO-DA

SWEDISH DIRECTOR JOHANNES NYHOLM ON HIS

SERIOUSLY STRANGE FAIRY-TALE FANTASY

IT COMES FROM A NURSERY RHYME

The fi lm shares its title with a popular

French lullaby. “I sang it a lot as a kid,”

says director Johannes Nyholm. “It’s

funny but also a bit scary. [The rhyme]

is about a dead rooster which is still alive

in a way, living in a limbo land between

death and life.”

IT’S BASED ON A NIGHTMARE The

fi lm depicts a grieving couple trapped in

a hellish loop, repeatedly assaulted by

a giggling Dutchman in a white suit.

The Groundhog Day-esque structure

borrows, Nyholm says, from his dreams.

“I mean, it’s the way my nightmares

work, at least,” he says. “You get stuck

in a situation, you try to escape, then

end up in the same spot again.”

IT HAS SOME OCCASIONAL SHADOW

PUPPETRY Between the horrors we also

witness the story in shadow-play form —

which, Nyholm explains, helped soften the

fi lm’s sharp edges. “The fi lm was extremely

cruel without it,” he says. “I felt it has to

have some light at the end of the tunnel.

This shadow play makes it bearable.”

IT’S NOT REALLY A HORROR To o

surreal to be defi ned by one genre,

Nyholm calls it “more of a relationship

drama. I mean, you could call it horror,

but it’s defi nitely not the traditional horror

movie. It’s really a sinister fairy tale.”

JOHN NUGENT

KOKO-DI KOKO-DA WILL BE IN CINEMAS

AT A LATER DATE

ON 28 JANUARY, the Walt Disney Company

announced an updated version of deer-comes-

of-age classic Bambi. What we know so far is this:

produced by, among others, the Weitz brothers

(About A Boy), the reimagining is being penned

by screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet

(Tomb Raider, Captain Marvel) and Lindsey

Beer (Chaos Walking) as a photo-real version of

the 1942 classic — a companion piece to similar

remakes of The Jungle Book and The Lion King.

There’s no word whether this is heading to the

big screen or Disney+, but Bambi poses perhaps

the biggest stretch yet in the Mouse House’s series

of live-action versions of its back-catalogue.

The adorable deer is the latest

Disney property to get a CGI

tune-up. Will it traumatise a

new generation all over again?

No. / 17

Is the world

ready for a

live-action

Bambi?

like a prosaic Attenborough documentary of

animals rubbing their noses together if writ

real. Sure, you can write these scenes out, but

what are you left with?

And then, of course, there is the murder of

Bambi’s mother at the hands of a hunter. It’s

a sequence so powerful (remember the key

moment is off screen) that Paul McCartney

cites it as inspiring his passion for animal

rights. In December 2018, David Berry Jr,

a Missouri poacher, was ordered to watch it

once a month as part of a yearlong sentence for

planning to illegally kill hundreds of deer.

If that’s the eff ect of the scene in stylised

animation, what would it be on a generation of

kids watching photo-real animals on an IMAX

screen? It’d be like the intensity of 1917 , Uncut

Gems and Takeshi Miike all in one hit. You’d

need a life raft to escape the tears. IAN FREER

are manifold. While the

mated versions ofThe Jungle BookandThe

Lion Kingboth clocked in at 78 and 88 minutes

respectively, the cartoon Bambi barely scrapes

70 minutes, meaning the fi lmmakers will have

their work cut out bolstering what is already

an episodic if ridiculously charming narrative.

Furthermore, unlike the set pieces of, say, The

Lion King — the presentation of Simba, the

stampede, ‘Hakuna Matata’ — Bambi’s big scenes

are even further entrenched in animation for

their power to delight and disarm. A rain storm

that “drip-drip drops little April showers” might

be feasible, but the sight of besties Bambi (deer)

and Thumper (rabbit) comedically fl ailing about

on ice in ‘live action’ would alert the RSPCA. And

then there’s the moment Bambi, Thumper and

Flower (skunk) get ‘twitterpated’ (or fall in love)

— a moment of pure animation that would be

REMAKE BELIEVE

THREE OTHER LIVE-ACTION REMAKES

COMING FROM DISNEY

THE LITTLE MERMAID

The 1989 classic is getting a live-action

update with Halle Bailey in the title role.

SNOW WHITE AND THE SEVEN DWARFS

Disney’s fi rst-ever animated feature

is getting a new spin from director

Marc Webb.

PINOCCHIO

Director Robert Zemeckis is behind an

updated take on the puppet-turned-real-boy.

t The challenges are ma if

animated

PREVIEW