REVIEW: Doe and the Technicolor Dreambow

Title: The Rainbow

Director: Josčo Marušik

Running Time: 75 minutes 

Doe and the Technicolor Dreambow

   

Josčo Marušik, with his film The Rainbow, is determined to change audiences’ approaches to animation just as much as he is determined to examine the relationships between parents and children or between expectations and diversions of interest in upholding those expectations by those most affected by them, the children.

            Marušik, through employing frame within a frame within a frame narrative style, centers the story on the conflict of a young girl, nicknamed “Doe,” confined to her house with only the use of a smuggled handkerchief and her own imagination to create entertainment and playmates for herself. By weaving other Croatian short stories in with Doe’s plight, Marušik creates a mixed world of fantasy and reality in which to fully explore the depths of disappointment faced by those confined to the restraints placed on them, but most especially, the disappointments experienced by those who struggle against the restraints and, as a result, find themselves even more hopelessly entangled.

            Although The Rainbow relies on a simplistic animation structure reminiscent of an early nineties Reading Rainbow episode to tell the grievous tale of the Croatian children’s plight, the style showcases the minute detail of each frame that lingers on the screen. The artists take care to simplify the least important images, such as the trees in the background, while adding detail to the images the audience should focus on throughout the film, like the characters and their expressions.

          Doe is highly stylized as a result of her importance to the film. She stares wistfully out her bedroom window in several key scenes in The Rainbow, and by examining each still of her face as the movie progresses, it is evident the lines in her face grow longer and deeper and the corners of her eyes droop with sadness each time her parents refuse to let her play outdoors with the other children, causing her to look aged and dried up well before her time.

          Doe dreams of becoming an alkar (warrior) instead, and introduces Salko, whose story entwines with her own but poses a contrasting view on the role of masculinity in Croatian history as he is thwarted of his dreams by his own father. Salko’s foil to Doe’s woes shows the inequality of genders is not the only issue for children to fight to overcome, as even young men can be deprived of a happy life.

          The quick pacing and heavy narration in The Rainbow comes close to overwhelming the audience with a number of stories of Croatian children, each sadder than the one before it. The relentless rain from the beginning of the film mirrors the relentless tears the children cry as each one struggles against their lot in life only to find nothing rewarding on the other side.

          Sava, born into poverty and deprived the fingers on her right hand after a sow her parents insisted she keep bites them off, cannot even prevail after having learned to weave only using one hand and her teeth, but she imparts a bit of wisdom to Doe about rainbows. Sava tells Doe, “If a girl passes under a rainbow, she would become a boy,” which gives Doe the courage to find a rainbow and attain all her hopes for a new life.

          Dreams and reality collide as Salko and Doe’s stories come to an end and the movie returns to the real world. Doe finds a rainbow and begins her long walk toward the center of it through a swampy marsh as her only toy, the handkerchief with her beloved playmates, washes away in the water.

As the scene fades and Doe continues trekking forever onward towards a hope of a new life, we are left with a melancholic realization that she will never reach her dream because rainbows are merely illusions and nothing more.

          However, since the playmates from Doe’s handkerchief are the only figures able to transcend the boundaries between fiction and reality and provide the audience with the most fluid animation of the entire film, they effectively become the most real, most lasting figures of the film even though they only exist as illusions in Doe’s imagination.

         Perhaps, even though the playmates only exist in Doe’s mind and the minds of those who hear her tale, they become real as long as people can still envision them and allow them to traverse generations. Perhaps, if reality is only what we perceive it to be, like with illusions of rainbows and playmates, then all that is real is how people perceive the world around them, providing a glimmer of hope for Doe and for all Croatian children of future generations.

          All there is, was, and ever shall be are our perceptions, so as long as we can remember the past and retain hope for a better future, our world will be all that we can imagine it to be, illusions, rainbows, and reality be damned.