A Trip to the Moon

 Let me get one thing clear. I’m not really a girl who watches black-and-white movies. I very rarely watch movies from before 2000 (Disney is sometimes an exception). I find old movies kind of slow. I know that sounds weird. It’s not something people admit, but right now, I think it’s only right if I do. Also, I don’t analyze films. I usually stick to books.

Today, however, I watched a short film called A Trip to the Moon by Georges Méliès. I was trying to watch it from the lens of a fantasy writer. First of all, this is a silent movie. There’s no dialogue whatsoever. It’s full of silent action. One thing I noticed is that there were no words at all. I don’t mean just dialogue, but there were no boards or signs with words on them either.

The very first thing I noticed was that it looked like Harry Potter in a way. There were old men in pointy hats like Dumbledore wears. The room at the beginning of the film looked like the Great Hall. The architecture reminded me of it as well.

The men were telling the story completely through their physical actions and facial expressions. They were trying to get to the moon. I’m guessing they were astronomers. They had been studying the moon and were wondering how to get there. Their discussions were animated and chaotic. Their actions and reactions showed how they were looking for ideas and talking over one another. Next, they worked together to build a rocket. Of course it didn’t look like a real advanced rocket. It looked more like a bullet.

A few other things I noticed about the way the film was made are that it was kind of like a flip book. The way the actors and the backdrop moved was like they were drawn and flipped. Second, I noticed a lot of fanfare about the take-off. The rocket took off and shot straight into the moon. The graphics there were cute and suitable for children. The rocket lodged itself into the moon’s face and the moon cringed.

Towards the end of the movie, there were some things that I felt mirrored other movies I had seen. First was Alice in Wonderland. The mushrooms and the moon’s ecosystem looked like Wonderland. The characters on the moon wore costumes rather than using CGI to make them look like creatures. I also saw a scene that looked like The Pirates of the Caribbean. It kind of mirrored the scene where Jack Sparrow gets kidnapped by a tribe who thinks he’s a god.

These are the observations I had. If you ask me if I liked the movie, I’d say yes. I learned that the movies I watched might be influenced by older ones. That influence might be obvious or hidden. It was also nice to see how different this film was to the ones I usually watch.