Getting swept away by a fantasy world is one of moviegoing’s more rarefied pleasures, disbelief dissolving as readily as a pill on the tongue. That makes achieving it a tricky endeavor. Count first-time feature director Isaiah Saxon among the more hardworking and dedicated magicians to attempt it of late with his mist-laden cryptozoological fable “The Legend of Ochi,” a wade in the waters of Miyazaki and Spielberg (that is, the Spielberg of “E.T.” and “Gremlins,” mind you).
A great deal of care — the handmade, digital and location kind — has gone into realizing this earnest, archly amusing tale of a brooding teenage girl bonding with a threatened furry forest creature. Indeed, figuring out where the rapturous, realistic Carpathian geography ends and the effects wizardry begins is something of a thankless (and, to be honest, buzzkilly) endeavor. At the same time, writer-director Saxon’s own virtuosity, occasionally aggressive, eventually leaves our hopes for real emotions wanting, once we’ve become attuned to the dazzle.
High in the mountains of their island community, Yuri (Helena Zengel) is the black sheep in her motherless family. A gentle soul with a barely disguised contempt for the hunting culture fostered by her warrior-fetishizing dad Maxim (a reliably grizzled Willem Dafoe) and silently accepted by her sensitive-looking older brother Petro (Finn Wolfhard), Yuri has been taught to fear what lies beyond their open farmland.
But the true paranoia is saved for the mysterious, primate-like species called ochi, beasts that once again evade a nighttime hunt led by Yuri’s father, ludicrously armor-accessorized like a cosplay centurion, leading a posse of rifle-wielding boys from the area. Her hilariously deadpan assessment of it all over the family meal the following night is a grumble: “It’s stupid.”
Later, checking the bear traps, however, Yuri encounters a big-eared baby ochi cowering in a hole, its hind leg bloodied. Squirreling the creature home in her backpack, she assuages its hissing-and-squawking terror with some simple nursing, then decides the right thing to do is reunite her new friend with its family. That this sincere notion dovetails with an itch to vacate her dour, oppressive home only adds to her determination. The quest takes further dimensions when the pair’s language barrier inexplicably collapses, followed by Yuri encountering her long-absent mother (a deliciously grimy and weathered Emily Watson), a solitary sheep-herder who’s an ochi expert, it turns out.
Like a lot of folk-fantasy movies grounded in recognizable reality, “The Legend of Ochi” explains too much about its mythical critters — a job Watson is regrettably saddled with — when what’s called for is a defter storytelling touch. Especially since we know where this quirky human-versus-beast showdown is headed in terms of ecological lessons about harmony between species and dramatic resolutions regarding the stubbornness of parents and children.
A graduate of music videos, Saxon — like the Gondrys and Jonzes before him — excels at sheathing his yarn in idiosyncratic humor, atmosphere and technique. Burnished by Evan Prosofsky’s painterly cinematography, “The Legend of Ochi” is a beautiful case for the tactile spectacle of puppetry as maybe the most intimate enchantment tool.
And yet, by film’s end, we’re left with smiling admiration for its peculiarity and artistry instead of a catharsis, because too much of “The Legend of Ochi” feels like a presentation. Good actors are game pieces more than characters, settings are backdrops more than environments and David Longstreth’s crescendo-packed orchestral score (like avant-garde John Williams in its best moments) too often feels insistent than convincing. It’s a jewel box of a film, for sure, with a nice message inside, but losing yourself in its world is where it falls short.
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