Son of the White Mare

I'd been meaning to check this one out for a while, so was excited to see that it's now been remastered and released in the US on blu ray. I convinced my kids to watch it by suggesting that it would be a good Halloween choice-there is a descent into the underworld, after all-but it's not so much creepy as foreboding. The movie claims to have a basis in ancient Hungarian/Avar myth (and hey, the title does include a horse in it), presumably oral, but I haven't been able to find its actual source anywhere. The myth itself is strange and hard to follow, but majestic, driven less by the sparse Hungarian narration than the amazing visuals, which have made the movie famous. A constantly transforming mix of rectilinear shapes and curves, with lively light play and lightening, frame all the characters and their environment, and fits the cosmological myth perfectly. I'm also curious how the animation was produced-in many of the scenes it seems like no animation cel background was used, in others almost like there was a "foreground". Anyway, respect to my kids: the film was not what they were expecting, but they got into it, especially towards the end, and stuck with it over three nights or so, all while dealing with subtitling.