This seems like mythology for people who find even mythology’s explanations a little taxing. Look, it’s very simple: The sun is tethered to a beast; the moon is tethered to a different beast; they follow each other around a very small globe, get it?
Ah, but it is time to change the guardians for the sun and the moon. So.many.questions. First off: “Guardians?” Do the sun and moon need guardians? Is somebody trying to steal the sun? Why YES, somebody is trying to steal the sun. And it helps that the sun is steal-able. This one doesn’t quite have a radius of 432,450 miles. Instead, it’s roughly the size of the thing Atlas is holding in front of 30 Rockefeller Plaza. You see, it doesn’t quite hang in the sky at a distance of 91.494 million miles; it’s more like 100 feet. Similarly, the moon is the size of a beach ball and when it gets sad, it disintegrates.
Question #2: Why only one guardian if these things can be stolen? Answer: No idea.
Question #3: Who selects the guardians? Answer: I don’t know who selects the sun guardian; that one seems to be an accepted apprenticeship. The moon guardian is selected by a lunar ewe. You read that right. Follow up question — does this celestial sheep only come out on lunar ewe near?
Question #4: Who trains the guardians? Answer: Nobody. It is quite clear from the outset that while there exist apprentice guardians for the sun and the moon, neither is trained in even the most basic duties their job might require.
Question #5: If guardians receive no formal training, how do they know what to do? Answer: They don’t. That seems to be the plot of the movie.
Question #6: If they don’t know what they’re doing, why select both sun and moon guardians on the same day? Answer: No freaking idea. It seems to me most problems could be avoided if at least one guardian knew what they were doing.
If you sifted through all that, you probably understand that the film opens on the changing of the guardians and there is foul afoot. Sohone, a young arrogant hunk –think Gaston—is the new guardian of the sun. The apprentice to the moon, Leeyoon –a self-centered punk masquerading as an evil mage- is snubbed by the choosing sheep in favor of Mune, an irresponsible teenage faun. Mune is hardly immune from ugliness, but he has up to this point spent his life as the “dream master,” somebody with the power to get others to sleep and dream, which is a pretty useful power to abuse.
Given the reigns to his moon-beast, Mune gets things out of control within, literally, thirty seconds. This is when any amount of training might have come in handy. Seriously, I’m not sure what you expect here. It’s like bringing a random member of the Golden State Warriors to the Diablo power plant; telling him “make sure the reactor is filled,” taking off and locking the door behind them. How disappointed are we supposed to be when Mune breaks all the tethers that tie moon to the beast?
FWIW, I have deliberately failed to name any actors for this film. Mune: Guardian of the Moon (Mune, le gardien de la lune) is a French film from 2014 redubbed into English – which means two casts already, except that the English version was re-mastered and re-dubbed in 2017 with an entirely new cast; I am not convinced the version that got to me credited the correct actors for their work, hence, I have decided not to credit anybody. Nyah. Besides,
if you’re gonna have a film with “Moon” in the title twice, don’t you want it to be acted by people like Kyle Mooney and Diego Luna? Real missed opportunity, fellas.
Meanwhile, Sohone seemed to have the sun-moving in hand until the moon-beast broke his groove. And while attempting to corral the moon himself, well, the sun got stolen. I continue to ask this question: how disappointed are we supposed to be when two untrained guys fail to do the important jobs they haven’t been trained to do?
Well, it sure makes the plot easy: Sohone has to collect the stolen sun; Mune has to collect the errant moon. And aiding them is a wax girl named Glim, who doesn’t have Sohone’s brute strength or Mune’s magic, but is the only one who knows anything about anything … which tends to come in handy on quests.
That big explanation may lead one to believe I didn’t like this film. Quite the contrary. While it’s true that the characters didn’t do much for me, I liked the plot: I think kids films often forget how important the simplicity of quest is. Most importantly, however, Mune: Guardian of the Moon is a very pretty film. You could mute the Mune and still get engrossed in the dazzling visuals and Miyazaki-like animation. Mune shows us exactly why animated films still have power: because visuals are almost always more compelling than ideas, especially among evolving minds. Mune: Guardian of the Moon may not be a great film, but when you place it next to Citizen Kane, where is your eye drawn? Such is not true of all animated films.
There once was a Guardian named Mune
Whose actions one might impugn
Is our blue pal a cancer?
Consider before you answer:
Who wouldn’t want moonrise in afternoon?
Rated PG, 85 Minutes
Director: Alexandre Heboyan, Benoît Philippon
Writer: Benoît Philippon & Jérôme Fansten
Genre: Science for people who don’t like science
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: Aesthetes
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: Hardcore scientists
