Director: Anders Ronnow-Klarlund With the voices of: James McAvoy, Derek Jacobi, Catherine McCormack Category: IIA In an age dominated by sensationalist, CGI-driven blockbusters, Strings is an anomaly. There's neither a mind-warping special effect nor digitally manufactured crowd in sight, and not a drop of blood was shed. In fact, bar the shadows of moving feet at the start of the film, there isn't a trace of human presence throughout the film. Strings is populated entirely by marionettes. The way Anders Ronnow-Klarlund deliberately shows - albeit for only a few seconds - the bustle of the puppeteers doesn't undermine the strength of Strings. Such metaphysical devices - which include the characters' sharp awareness of themselves as wooden parts of a whole - paint the film as a Nordic epic, with invisible human hands unfurling a tale of regicide and war through a Hamlet-like retrospection about existence. It's to the credit of Ronnow-Klarlund and his co-screenwriter, Naja Maria Aidt, that Strings doesn't become a spectacle that trades merely on its novelty value. Although never aspiring to postmodern film-making trickeries such as mixed-up timelines and multi-perspective storytelling, Strings thrives by inventing a plot that doesn't just pit squeaky-clean heroes against out-and-out gnarling baddies: there's a history to the characters that is mined to explain their conversion towards good and evil. Strings starts with the suicide of the monarch Kahro (voiced by Julian Glover), which triggers a series of events that result in mutiny within the royal house and devastating warfare outside the city walls. The film might begin like Hamlet, but it reaches into darker territory. Crown prince Hal (James McAvoy), who has set his heart to avenge the death of his supposedly chivalrous father, discovers the king's dark legacy of slavery - from which bluebloods find spare parts for their ageing limbs - and genocide that drove a citizenry to celebrate rather than mourn the sovereign's passing. The tribe he thought was responsible for the assassination, meanwhile, is unveiled as the victims rather than perpetrators of bloody mayhem - a view drummed into him by his wicked uncle Nezo (Derek Jacobi). Such intrigue is illuminating, given how films that deal with mythology rarely expose the racial and caste-driven exploitation that finances the bombastic adventures of gallant, aristocratic iconoclasts. But then, of course, there are the 22 puppeteers who manage to make it all work. The marionettes move with poise or brutality - depending on whose side they're on. So natural do they look in the scheme of things that viewers could easily forget that it's puppet-play they're watching. Economical in resources, but compelling in technique and story-telling, Strings easily runs rings around the CGI-drenched fare that chokes cinemas throughout festive seasons. Strings is screening now
