Hans Christian Andersen: My Life as a Fairy Tale

Oooooooh, I loved this movie. Quite true to Andersen's life. Kieran Brew (Hans) captured his innocent, sensitive personality just perfectly. Emily Hamilton as Jette was also fantastic. Good integration of his tales into the plot, that was a good addition. I loooooved this movie!

This film is absolutely fabulous fiction. Without disclosing much of the actual events, it focuses on Hans Christian Andersen's relations to women after he has left his childhood home. It is described at two levels. A straightforward reality outlines the dilemma quite sober and exact: should you go for what you need, or should you be led by your deepest desire. As intervals fantasies consisting of reproductions of some of the main character's world-famous fairy tales offer the viewer an intense and intuitive understanding that might be hard to obtain otherwise. This is fantasy at its best. I can only compare it with reading Michael Ende's book: The Never-ending Story, and of course Pink Floyd's music-movie of genius 'The Wall'. It is a success mixing reality and fantasy into a higher entity.

This programme weaves a story within a story, the faireytales are brought to life as Hans is brought to his destiny, his own faireytale life. From his impetuous leap into the world to his triumphant crowning glory, pyrrhic & wrought with a too late realization. Hans' stories are used to illustrate his own life, chapters within his ascension. I cast a vote of nine for two reasons. 1) I reserve the highest possible rating for that which leaves me unconcious with delight. 2) There were just a few poorly edited scenes, where an obvious commercial break was intended but the story of the moment got treated a bit like a frisbee run over with a lawnmower. I suppose you could call this a docu-something. Drama? There are dramatic moments. Comedy? There are comedic moments, most often well played by Kieran Bew. He brings Hans to life with madcap delight & innocence & fearlessness born of the ignorance of cruelty. There is a lovely love story here as well. I fell in love with Emily Hamilton's portrayal of Jette. Her obvious love for Hans, her selflessness, her tenderness & strength in adversity are moving. I could go on, & everyone here deserves their moment of illumination, but there are so many & so little room. I would like to note especially Simon Callow as Charles Dickens, and the humour, sweetness, gentleness & poignancy the writer, director & crews wove into the story. God bless you, every one.

'The Ugly Duckling' was a part of our English textbooks when I was six-seven years old. After that my interaction with Hans Christian Andersen's tales has been sadly minimal... Until of course I saw Hallmark's production of 'The Snow Queen' with Bridget Fonda recently. But it was this film that really made Hans Christian Andersen intriguing to me and actually made me want to learn more about him through the net. It is one of Hallmark's best productions with really good performances from everyone.

Kieran Bew is excellent in the title role. I'm sad to read from his filmography that hitherto this is the only film he has acted in. In the film, Hans' "brother" Edward, played by Mark Dexter, reads from a letter informing his father (James Fox), that Hans met Victor Hugo while in Paris. It so happened that while reading Hugo's 'Les Miserables' recently (a tome which I have yet to finish!), I could not, really could not imagine anyone else playing the character of the earnest, handsome young Marius in the novel but Kieran Bew! And this was before I even saw this film. I had just seen some trailers of it. I know that there are quite a few productions of 'Les Miserables' already in existence, the most recent one being with Liam Neeson as Jean Valjean. But, I do hope that there is one more production of this epic novel and Kieran Bew gets to play Marius - it's a character made for him! He's a good actor whom I really hope to see in many more films!

All in all a really worthwhile film that needed to be made to keep the torch of Andersen's tales burning(dimmed as it is in the popular imagination by the more dominating presence of the tales of the Brothers Grimm).

The life of Hans Christian Andersen "ad usum Delphini". Seductive, charming, colorful, tender, moving, amusing, impeccable crafted. A film for children and for their parents. The great virtue- splendid clash between life events and his writings universe. The delicate love story. And the wise portrait of a different, so special hero. Short, a serie who you must see. As entertainment, off course but as real nice gift for inner child.