One of my favorite movies and deserves a place in my top-10 list,absolutely.
As a German low-budget, crowd-funding movie, which could be learnt from its official website, it impressively stands out from many commercial movies nowadays, from my perspective at the very least. Obviously, Queen of Niendorf lays great emphasis on the adorable and spellbinding depiction of memorable childhood experiences, featuring the juxtaposition of thrilling adventures and idyllic sceneries.
For the adventures, childish as they may seem in our eyes, it's exactly they that trigger the genuine interest and thrill of kids. Besides, they bear perfect witness to Lea's coming of age, from a "follower" to the "queen" of boys. The "railway test" vividly demonstrates the resilience, unyieldingness, recklessness and masculinity of our little Lea. So dangerous? Oh please just interpret the whole movie in children's mind--they are just as care-free as that way, and Lea is just full of guts, bravery and charm.
For the bucolic countryside scenery, it's more refreshing and intoxicating than that in most movies (comparable to Heidi, Under the Tuscan Sun, Flipped, etc). From the azure sky to bright sunshine, from emerald meadows to golden fields, from dazzlingly transparent swimming pool to smooth country road perfect for riding......What else should I covet if living in such a picturesque paradise?
It's also a wonderful movie without the boundary of time and space. Whenever you're born and wherever you're from, as long as you're watching it, an invisible bond comes into being with each and every one of other audience, empathizing with this romantically lovely children's world, which, more or less, we are nostalgic about, yearned for, infatuated with and dreaming of. Every once in a while throughout the movie,a knowing smile may dawn on our faces: isn't that proud boy or persistent girl I used to be? Didn't I once build a similar secret base like that tree house? Didn't I take daring adventures and play naughty tricks as they do? In this sense, rather than simple viewers and receivers, we, at least to some extent, collectively create this movie.
At last, this one, together with many other children's movies, reveals at a deeper level an underlying, easily-neglected yet frustrating truth, that is, when you can fully understand and admire a children's movie, you're no longer a child any more. Conversely, a real light-hearted, free-of-worry-and-care child may never identify with them, since the life and the experience depicted in them is literally the same as theirs, thus having nothing to be envious of or longing for--they just aloofly put them away: a record of my life? So boring and tedious! They prefer animations of fancy plots and characters. Decades later, when looking back, however, they will possibly have a dawning comprehension that the life they used to is actually the most treasurable at all. But what on earth can you do about it? Just getting more wistful yet lost. After all, such is human nature, that we are always unaware and oblivious of what we currently own but retrospective and reminiscent of what we used to have, that we can only cherish what is gone.
Anyway, should I've got a chance to relive the dreamy childhood, which is as splendid and iridescent as that in this movie, I'll go for it at any cost.
