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In the company of my enthralled 12-year-old son, I watched the latest Disney version of “The Jungle Book,” and there were moments when I envied him—but not too many, because the film is so surefooted in its effects, so precise and simple in its characterizations, and so clear about what it’s trying to say about the relationship between humanity and nature, that it made me feel about his age again, too. Perhaps a little younger.
It takes you on a journey through the jungle with young Mowgli (Neel Sethi), his wolf family, and his feline guardian, the black panther Bagheera (Ben Kingsley), through its comic setpieces with the slacker Baloo the Bear (Bill Murray), and its sinister interludes with the python Kaa (Scarlett Johansson), the despot orangutan King Louie (Christopher Walk
Because so much of this “Jungle Book” has been generated on a computer, it isn’t accurate to refer to it as a “live-action” version. These distinctions are rendered moot by the work of screenwriter Justin Marks, director Jon Favreau, and the hundreds of collaborators who work with them. Incorporating spectacular widescreen images of rain forests, watering holes, and crumbling temples, a couple of human actors, and realistic mammal, bird, and reptile characters who nevertheless speak, joke, and even sing in celebrity voices, the film creates its own dream-space that appears to be both illustrated and tactile at the same time. Inadvertently, it’s the kind of movie that comes to mind when you re-read one of Rudyard Kipling’s source books or watch the 1967 animated Disney film, both of which contributed strands of this one’s original creative DNA.
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A year after Walt Disney’s death, the Disney animated version was released, marking the beginning of the company’s period of creative wandering (though other features that had been in development for years, most of them lackluster, would appear throughout the decade that followed). It was, like much of the company’s 1960s and 1970s output, carefree to a fault—a succession of beautifully rendered, mostly jokey set-pieces strung together by memorable songs, including “The Bare Necessities,” “I Wanna Be Like You,” and the python’s seduction song “Trust in Me”—but it still made a deep impression on ’60s and ’70s kids like the 49-year-old Favreau. This version is a more straightforward telling that includes only two brief musical numbers, “The Bare Necessities” and “I Wanna Be Like You,” which are performed by Sethi with Murray and Walken, respectively. According to Hoyle, these are the only musical numbers in the film. In exchange, the film reserves the approximately seven-minute end credits sequence, which is so intricately imagined that it is worth the ticket price on its own. It also relegates a longer version of the ape’s song as well as a torch-song-y version of “Trust in Me,” performed by Johansson. Other songs, such as the elephants’ marching song and “That’s What Friends Are For,” performed by a barbershop quartet of mop-topped vultures, are conspicuously absent, presumably in the interest of keeping the show moving quickly.
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While I don’t consider the absence of music in this film to be a flaw, it does provide some indication of how gracefully this “Jungle Book” juggles the competing interests of parents and children in this film. There are enough nods to the 1967 original in the film’s music, visuals, and tone to satisfy nostalgia fans, but not too many that the film becomes a glorified rehash of the previous film. To the point where the wolves, Mowgli, and other creatures recite a stripped-down version of Kipling’s poem “The Law of the Jungle” (“…For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf/and the strength of the Wolf is the Pack”), Kipling’s tales are a stronger influence on this film. Also included in the film are nods to Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan stories and the masterful comics illustrator Burne Hogarth’s adaptations, both of which appear to have influenced the way the film’s CGI artists depict the trees: as gnarled, knuckled, pretzel-twisted, vine-shrouded wonders that rise from the forest floor.
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The film creates its own, more politically evolved version of Kipling’s literary ecosystem, complete with ancient animal beliefs and practices, such as predators and prey declaring a “water truce” during a drought so that they can all drink unmolested from a parched watering hole. The film is based on the novel by Rudyard Kipling. The film also infuses Mowgli with a sense of optimistic environmentalist fantasy: where human mastery of fire and tools was presented in earlier films as a threat, and Mowgli’s fated exit from the jungle as an unfortunate necessity, the boy is shown using his ingrained ingenuity to solve problems beyond the capabilities of his animal friends, such as when he builds a rappel and pulley system to help Baloo claim honey from a cliffside beehive that Baloo has been co The underlying premise here appears to be that humanity is not doomed to subjugate and destroy the natural world. People and animals can coexist in harmony if we act with kindness and mercy, while also showing reverence for the ancients of other species, such as the elephants who, according to Bagheera, were responsible for the creation of the rain forest and the direction of water flow by digging canals with their hooves and tusks, among other things.
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While the film takes these and other ideas seriously, it does so in a matter-of-fact manner, so that they don’t come across as clumsily superimposed, but rather as discoveries within a text that has been around for more than a century. As effectively as Johansson’s Kaa voice-work hypnotizes Mowgli, Kingsley’s unhurried storybook narration hypnotizes the audience into purchasing everything Favreau shows us in The Jungle Book. It is during this sequence that Mowgli witnesses one of the most extraordinary embellishments in the new film: as he looks into one of Kaa’s eyes, he sees his own origin story play out within it.
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Another type of balancing act is taking place during the performances of the voice actors. For laughs from the audience, Favreau relies on the distinctive voices of his stars, and he allows some of their familiar physical and facial tics to seep into the animal “performances”: Murray is a shambling pleasure-seeker in real life, as well as in many of his film roles, and this is reflected in his acting. Walken is renowned for his ability to portray villains who are both funny and frightening, and who enjoy messing with the minds of heroes (his performance here is merged with Marlon Brando’s performance as Kurtz in “Apocalypse Now,” in which he enters the story cloaked in Rembrandt gloom). Kingsley has developed into one of the greatest mentor figures in film history. And so forth.
However, the film is never satisfied with relying on our fondness for its voice actors as a storytelling crutch. Characters who are strong, simple, and clearly motivated, rather than movie star cameos wrapped in CGI fur, are featured. Elba’s Khan is the most impressive of the bunch. His loping menace is envisioned so vividly that he would be frightening regardless of the circumstances, but the character is elevated to the status of a great villain through imaginative empathy. The same can be said for Magua in Michael Mann’s “The Last of the Mohicans” and for General Zod in “Man of Steel,” in which we understand and appreciate his point of view despite the fact that carrying it out would result in the death of Mowgli.
It should be considered a triumph in every way that this quietly majestic film is presented to us. The well-known, picaresque tale of a young boy who is raised by forest creatures but who is doomed to re-join the human race. The film Man has been reimagined as a funny, frightening, and emotionally affecting family adventure with mythic weight, but with a welcome lack of swagger. Despite the fact that it was created using the most up-to-date filmmaking technology, it retains the ethical values and broad-net storytelling sensibility of an Old Hollywood classic. When it is at its best, it gives the impression that it has always existed and we are only now discovering it.
For more personality quizzes check this: Captain America Civil War Quiz.
