Lemony Snickets and the amazing...

There are a few stories that can be called amazing, a few books and a few films. These stories treat the amazing seriously, and they take (what some people would call) childrens tales seriously. I love these stories, I simply love them.

One of my favorite stories is Peter Pan, the 19th century novel by sir James Barrie. As you know it's a very famous story, and has been adapted countless times. Very few adaptations are good, though. I'd say that the most recent adaptation, the 2003 P.J. Hogan film, is one of the few that's true to the story. (Forget Disneys version, 'cause it's no good.) Anyway, the film. It really treats the amazing as it should be- it treats it seriously. If you haven't seen it, rent it today.

Another film that really treats the amazing as it should be treated is Lemony Snickets and a serious of unfortunate events. I missed it when it came out, and just saw it. I must say, I'm happily surprised of how good it was. It tells the story of the Baudelaire children and their journey through a series of very unfortunate events. I haven't read the books it's based on, so I can't say anything about the adaptation. However, the film brings up a very important theme (a reaccurring theme in most good childrens stories, and adult stories to for that matter): the darkness.

Stories like Peter Pan, Harry Potter, the Astrid Lindgren-books all deal with it. In my experience most childrens stories don't deal with darkness at all- due to a misconception that children are innocent little creatures that should be spared that sort of thing. I do believe however that children dwell on these issues far more than the rest of us, and that it's important to tell their stories and not the stories we as adults wished were the childrens. I hope that this ideal notion of childhood would come to an end, and that we'd come to realise that children also dwell on the big questions of life; death, love, meaning of life, sexuality, loneliness and so on.

I suppose I could write forever about this, since it's a subject very dear to me. So expect future posts to deal with this aswell. For now, just watch Lemony Snickets and Peter Pan and remember being a child again.