Release Date: November 10, 2004
The Voices of: Tom Hanks, Daryl Sabara, Nona Gaye, Eddie Deezen, Peter Scolari
Directed by: Robert Zemeckis
Written by: Robert Zemeckis, William Broyles Jr.
Distributed by: Warner Brothers
MPAA Rating: G
When, as a young boy, I read (and reread) Chris Van Allsburg’s now-classic children’s book The Polar Express, it seemed to me like it was just the tip of the iceberg. The artist/author’s oil paintings showed the title’s great steam locomotive rumbling through frozen landscapes on its way to the North Pole, a fantastical, sprawling city dominated by ambitious European architecture and the industry of Christmas. But the book is only 32 pages long. Just as my imagination was coloring in the gaps of this spectacular world, the Polar Express was rattling southward again, returning the young heroes of the story to their homes and the reader to the book’s happy-sad denouement.
Now the film version of The Polar Express, a computer-animated movie directed by Robert Zemeckis and written by Zemeckis and William Broyles Jr., colors in those gaps for good. It is a surprisingly faithful and skilled adaptation of Van Allsburg’s book, a movie that expands the story without diluting it. As always, this is not entirely a story about Christmas or Santa Claus -- the jolly old elf is hardly the most important character, and he gets only a few minutes of screen time near the end -- but one about the dilemma that a young boy (voiced by Daryl Sabara) faces at a critical stage of his adolescence: Whether to believe in Santa Claus, despite the whispers of a doubt that have begun to gather in the back of his mind, or whether to drop the fairy-tale pretense altogether, as many of his friends have surely already done. The shorter version, and one that J.M. Barrie would have appreciated, is this: To stay young, or to grow up? And is there any way to do both?
Out of the gauzy, snowy fog of the late hours of Christmas Eve comes the answer, or at least a means of arbitration: a formidable, somewhat frightening (in a Burtonesque sense) steam locomotive, which now sits, improbably, parked in the street just outside of our hero’s house. Those who have read Van Allsburg’s book, or seen the theatrical trailer, will recognize the answer the train’s conductor (Tom Hanks) gives when the boy asks where it is headed: “Why, to the North Pole, of course! This is the Polar Express!”
After hesitating briefly, the boy jumps aboard, and, with the train, the movie is off, on a wild, roller coaster adventure to the North Pole, where Santa will mark the start of Christmas by giving the day’s first gift (those who will criticize the movie for its gyroscopic nature will reveal themselves as non-readers; Van Allsburg himself wrote that the train never slowed down as it headed north, “rolling over peaks and through valleys like a car on a roller coaster”). Aboard the train, our hero meets several other children like himself, who are beginning to doubt whether Santa Claus is real, including another girl (Nona Gaye) his age, a loudmouth know-it-all (Eddie Deezen), and a lonely boy (Peter Scolari) whose modest house suggests he has never had a proper Christmas. He also runs into a drifter (Hanks again) who rides atop the train and who prods the boy into thinking that the Polar Express and his unbelievable journey to the North Pole may only be a dream.
I have never been certain about that aspect of the story, even after reading the book and watching the movie. Many of the events in the plot would suggest that it is a dream -- there are no train lines to the North Pole, after all -- but the final scene tips the scales in the other direction, implying that there is a good reason they call them Christmas miracles. Your take will likely depend on how cynically you view the holiday: Those who found a movie like Surviving Christmas funny, for instance, will probably not be so enamored with The Polar Express. Regardless, and to its credit, the movie does not push substantially in one direction or the other. “No one is required to see Santa,” says the conductor when the train arrives at the North Pole, a statement you would hardly expect to hear in a movie that is supposedly about the joy of Christmas.
Except it’s not, or at least, not totally. Santa (Hanks as well), the real icon of Christmas, comes on only at the end -- more like a rock star, corporate tycoon, and political candidate, all rolled into one -- as he makes a cameo before a raucous crowd of hundreds of cheering elves. Long or short, no one can touch Santa’s legacy. But the more emblematic character in The Polar Express is the conductor, who has become more developed in this adaptation to great effect. He is done by Hanks as a gruff but warmhearted keeper of the flame -- by himself, he has no connection to the Christmas tradition, but without him, the movie implies, it might fall apart, and this is a responsibility he takes seriously. He has the same obsession with schedules and time and clocks as did Chuck Noland, Hanks’s character in Cast Away, but the actor gives it a comedic twist, playing to younger audiences as he is. Hanks is also, of course, effortless when it comes to shifting gears, and he has his more somber and heartfelt moments, too. “One thing about trains, it doesn’t matter where they’re going,” he says to our hero. “What matters is deciding to get on.”
It’s fortunate for us that the boy does decide to climb aboard, because The Polar Express is a wonderful realization of Van Allsburg’s artwork. Readers should recognize many of the details and paintings from the book: The quiet, snowy street outside of the boy’s house; the waiters who serve hot chocolate to the children aboard the train; the journey through forests filled with wolves and other animals; the splendid archways and lights of the North Pole; and the jam-packed square in the center of town where the movie and the book culminate with Santa’s appearance. Zemeckis and company have also added their own touches, including a scene inside Santa’s command center -- an expansive Mission Control-type room in which elves operate rows of computer monitors and reports of children’s deeds come in over wire service tickers.
The movie also takes a novel approach to the rendering of human characters, using so-called “performance capture” technology, in which Hanks and others mimed the actions of their animated counterparts in a studio to more accurately reflect a human presence onscreen. The results are mixed, and it is clear this technology needs time to grow. But it is a change of pace from the usual output of other computer-animation powerhouses like Pixar and DreamWorks, and the hazy limbo in which the characters exist is perhaps accidentally in sync with the story’s original, dreamlike atmosphere.
I would be interested to learn what Van Allsburg thinks of this film, beyond the usual sense of flattery that any author must feel when his work makes it to the big screen (nothing new for Van Allsburg, since he also wrote the book that Jumanji was based on). I would hope that he is impressed. Since its 1985 publication his book has become a children’s Christmastime classic, but the movie version of The Polar Express, which goes far beyond the book’s boundaries, is a tale for all seasons.
-- Craig Roush (craigroush@hotmail.com)