MY FATHER’S DRAGON. Motivating Kind of Cinema

To teenage Elmer from My Father’s Dragon, it may seem that he lives in paradise. Dela, his single mother, runs a thriving grocery store where he helps her serve customers every day. The boy knows where every single item is kept, even the smallest ones—from cinnamon candies to rubber bands. The off-screen narrator proudly notes, “This is my dad—my dad was always good at finding things.” A small, quiet town and a familiar, close-knit local community. Everything in its place, everyone known by name, countless solutions to every problem, a thousand ideas each morning about what to do with life. The store interior is painted in a gentle color palette, while outside the sun’s rays embrace the entire area. Good days interwoven with excellent ones. Until they aren’t.

With hurricane force, a crisis—or the brutal consequences of unpaid obligations—will strike Dela and Elmer. Mother and son are forced to leave the beloved place and, in search of work, move to a depressing metropolis with an all-too-meaningful name: Gray City (called Nevergreen in the English version). The bank takes over the store, and their savings are lost. It was beautiful; now it becomes truly hard. The filmmakers do not draw a detailed economic landscape for two reasons: the adoption of a child’s perspective (and the necessary simplifications that come with it) and the emphasis that the most essential and fundamental thing is the drastic change itself.

A cozy little house is replaced by a cramped hole, and fresh air by the stench of exhaust fumes. Excitement gives way to depression, and zeal and initiative are overtaken by a piercing fear of tomorrow. The intensity of stimuli, the flood of information, and the loss of a comfort zone do not so much make Elmer put on a brave face as they shift his imagination into entirely different gear. Or perhaps it is also the case that talking dragons and whales, wondrous islands, and fantastic natural phenomena are a truly existing world somewhere out there—one that can be seen if only you open your eyes wide enough.

Cartoon Saloon (you should know The Secret of Kells, The Breadwinner, or Wolfwalkers) once again leads the narrative through the prism of a child’s outlook—its delicacy and sensitivity. Put to the test and going through an emotional breakdown, Elmer, encouraged by a mysterious cat from the gloomy, oppressive metropolis, escapes to the colorful Wild Island. Yes, the creators follow a path first trodden by Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and countless later imitators (including the outstanding Song of the Sea by the creators of My Father’s Dragon). It remains a vibrant, inexhaustible, and creatively fertile narrative formula that allows the Imagined and the Real to be combined and set against each other.

On the island lives a dragon that can be kidnapped and brought to the city. It would become a major attraction and ensure a significant influx of money into the family budget. A moment of hesitation—but the decision seems obvious. Of course, the matter turns out to be far more tangled and ambiguous. Kidnapping a dangerous monster may bring benefits, but probably only one-sided ones. The other inhabitants of the island appear kind-hearted and trustworthy from the very beginning and—crucially—are just as much in need of the dragon as Elmer is. Saving one’s own family may cause a catastrophe for the fantastical land. That is not the point. The boy must tread carefully and learn altruism. He must bring about a situation in which both sides win—because both are right, and both must survive.

Nora Twomey, the director of My Father’s Dragon, structures her film as a series of dramatic miniatures and moral dilemmas. Elmer’s character is tempered before our eyes; the boy learns how to talk and, above all, how to listen. He begins to come to terms with fear and a sense of danger, and to stop reacting to these feelings impulsively: they are natural emotions, psychologically meaningful, and formative for healthy development. My Father’s Dragon treats all its characters with understanding—granting them both flaws and heroic traits, demanding that viewers reassess them and shift perspective.

It is also an uplifting, motivating kind of cinema, reminding us that there is always a way out, that somewhere there is always a light at the end of the tunnel. In this way, Twomey deftly arrives at an optimism-charged conclusion. Learning never goes to waste. Sometimes you have to run very far away to be able to start everything over again. Elmer’s final words—“I’ll figure something out”—are not a temporary declaration, but a plan for an entire life.