The Snow Queen

Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale comes to life in an enchanting mix of music and song, live drama and stunning animation. When Gerda and her mother take in the penniless beggar boy, Kay, powerful forces come into play that will take both children on a magical journey and test their friendship to the extreme. One cold winter night a splinter of ice pierces Kay's eye, turning his heart cold and making him angry and unhappy. He is enchanted by the Snow Queen and taken to her palace in the frozen North. Gerda decides that she must do whatever she can to find her friend. Faith, love and courage lead Gerda on a perilous quest through many strange lands. Will the little girl in the red velvet cloak be able to match the power of the Snow Queen? .com ---- This staggeringly gorgeous interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale The Snow Queen began as a concert of the pretty music by Paul K. Joyce. The story is told in broad strokes: A mother (Juliet Stevenson, Truly Madly Deeply) and her daughter Gerda (teen soprano Sydney White, who's been tearing up the musical stages in England) take in a homeless boy named Kay. When Kay disappears, kipped by the vampiric Snow Queen (ancestress to the White Witch of Narnia, no doubt), Gerda sets off in pursuit and comes across helpful ravens, talking flowers, moving statues, and benevolent reindeer in the course of her hero-journey. The wholly digital world created for this film is astonishing; much of it looks like hand-painted Victorian photographs, each image suitable for framing. Ironically, as the story grows more magical, the imagery turns more conventionally "fantastic" (the Snow Queen's arctic lair is a bit like Superman's Fortress of Solitude). But the overall texture of the movie is engagingly stylized, with movement that seems staggered yet graceful, like a silent film. The Snow Queen demonstrates that digital technology can make a more ethereal aesthetic as vivid and startling as a slimy alien or a bigger explosion. --Bret Fetzer

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