As with Moonstruck's appearance on the romantic comedy list, I found myself charmed by many of the selections on the fantasy list, even where I may not have made the choice myself. I was particularly happy to see Groundhog Day (1993) on this Top 10, but, like a number of other films here, the more I thought about the idea of “fantasy”, the more I began to wonder if some weren't misplaced or mis-categorized.
Groundhog Day, alongside Harvey (1950), Miracle on 34th Street (1947), and It's a Wonderful Life (1946), may be fantasies, but they are more accurately described as “fables”, that is, as stories that are essentially about life lessons rather than the fantastic, though they may use fantasy elements to tell their stories. Where the three older films are concerned, there are questions that clearly can, and are, raised about what the protagonists have experienced or who they actually are. Is George Bailey (Jimmy Stewart) actually visited by an angel, or has his subconscious conjured Clarence (Henry Travers) to thwart suicide? Is Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) actually Santa Claus? Does Harvey exist? I think that there are many reasonable answers to these questions. Even the list's top film, The Wizard of Oz (1939), quite explicitly raises the question of whether the heroine's experience was a dream or not.
The keywords in the AFI's definition of this genre are “inhabit” and “experience”. Of the films on the list, The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), King Kong (1933), Field of Dreams (1989), The Thief of Bagdad (1924), and Big (1988), are the ones that clearly, materially involve “live-action characters” in “imagined settings” or “situations that transcend the rules of the natural world” (although I would certainly pitch Field of Dreams as a fable, probably Big as well, which just goes to show the plasticity of genre). The selections cited above may or may not have their characters actually engaged in these kinds of worlds and circumstances. Do dreams, hallucinations, and what if scenarios count as inhabitable worlds or supernatural situations? If they do, then all of the films are fantasies of one kind or another. On the other hand, if the fantasy elements are not “actually” happening, maybe they aren't. In other words, for a film to be a “fantasy” does its storyworld have to be imagined or supernatural in a material sense or is it good enough that the audience is shown fantastic things, whatever their diegetic “reality” or origin?
Not unlike my thinking about the “mystery” category, I think that the AFI could have invested some time in refining its criteria. The current definition, for example, would seem to make room for superhero films (unless you want to count those as science fiction, or, hey, their own genre on some future special), but I doubt that those were seriously considered, if they were considered at all, for this category (a look at the larger selection lists would obviously answer this question, but I'm not motivated enough to open an AFI account; suffice to say that there are no superhero films on this or the scifi Top 10). More to the point, thinking about “fables” as a sub or independent genre would give more precision to how you think about “fantasy,” and maybe draw attention to a wider variety of movies that do, or at least more clearly, present live-action characters in fantastic settings and situations (Pleasantville, 1998, comes to mind).
On the other hand, as I stated in the introduction to this post, I think that this list is mostly made up of fine, or at least well loved, films, and maybe there's not much point in pushing arguments over definition (although I would argue for treating The Lord of the Rings movies as a single work; it seems that no matter which installment you pick, it is ultimately just a stand-in for the whole).
Link to introduction.
Originally posted on:Short-Circuit Signs