Tintin et moi

This is a brilliant documentary that follows the life of Herge and his creating TinTin. Its based around a series of interviews conducted in 1971, and covers every thing from his early life and "Nazi collaboration" to the final moments of his life.

Brilliantly edited, very cinematic and fast paced enough to not get boring. This film will give you a new appreciation for the work of Herge.

The film makers make the film more than just another documentary. Using the latest state of the art technology and for a change putting it to good use.

Recently more and more documentaries have been making it to cinemas. But this one as to be amongst the best...

Some thirty years ago, Author Numa Sadoul published a book length interview with the Belgian comic book artist Georges Remi (better known as Herge, the creator of Tintin). This movie catches up with Sadoul today as he recalls the interview, while we listen to the cassettes (Herge died in 1983) and see some old photos and footage of the man himself. Some parts of the interview were not published in the book at the request of Herge, and we now know these dealt with his separation from his wife, after he had an affair with one of his collaborators (who years later would become his second wife). An interesting thing the movie does not address well is the shift in the Tintin books from the early rightist and imperialist books (Tintin in the Congo, Tintin in the lands of the Soviets) to fairly anti-imperialist books just a few years later (The Blue Lotus). On the whole, I come out of this movie knowing a few more things about Herge and seeing him as a bit more unlikable than when I come in to the theater.

Quite frankly one of the best films I've ever seen about an artist and the process of creating art. I didn't grow up reading Tintin, but am mighty tempted to start now as an adult.

While the film succeeds at all levels in telling the story of Hergé's life, what really sets it apart is the filmmaker's masterful way of conveying the feeling of what it was like to be Hergé and what it means to live the greater part of one's life through the characters one has created. Time and time again, it was the emotion of the moment that got me, drawing me closer and closer to Hergé, and compelling me forward into the next scene and the next element of the artist's life, which cast yet another new light on who he was and what drove him.

This is an utterly timeless film about the joys and despair of being an artist. I can't recommend it highly enough.

Using a series of tape recorded interviews with Georges Remy over thirty years ago by Numa Sadoul, this documentary builds a visual element and also includes contributions from others to deliver a documentary that was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. You see for me I have never been more than a casual reader of the Tintin books and drew them from my local library at the same time as getting the Asterix books so I must admit that I wasn't too bothered about finding out more about the creator himself.

So it was a slow start for me but gradually the film drew me in because it does such a good job of maintaining the link between the man and his books, which I think is important for those viewers who are into the books but not the wider world thereof. Thus we get an understanding of the background that the strips and books were written against and how changes within the man, his employment and his country are shown within the changes in his work. Later in the film we mainly focus on the man himself but by then I was mostly engaging thanks to the nature of the delivery before this point. Of course the viewer does need to have at least some interest in the Tintin books beyond them just being comics they read as a child but the film does do a good job of trying to come and meet the audience halfway.

Overall then an interesting documentary that does try hard to overcome the fact that it was always going to appeal to a small audience no matter how good it was. Accordingly it does need you to at least care about the books and characters but it does help those of us who previously knew nothing of Hergé to have something that is still worth seeing.

If you as I have a very close and long relationship with the world of Tintin....do yourself a favor and watch this beautiful documentary about Hergé and his life creating Tintin. I'ts so brilliant and a very cool production. The whole background story about Hergé and the people and also very much the many different situations he was influenced by, for good and worse is amazing. There is a very fine and obvious connection between the comic books and just this. I will for sure be in my basement digging up the Tintin albums again. Also, the movie itself are very well told and has a great ambient sound to it. I really do hope people will find this as intriguing as I did!