By G. Connor Salter
Irish animation company Cartoon Saloon may be the best animation company you’ve never heard of. Through their venture group Lighthouse Studios, they’ve contributed to several shows or films you’ve heard of (The Cuphead Show, The Bob’s Burgers Movie). They’ve also contributed illustrations to books (including Tommy Donbavand’s Scream Street series).
However, film festivals know them for their well-crafted films that show traditional animation isn’t dead yet. Their first feature-length film, The Secret of Kells, directed by Tomm Moore, appeared in 2009. It enchanted viewers with its story about monks trying to finish the illuminated manuscript of the Book of Kells while dark folklore creatures (and threats from within) threaten their monastery. Moore finished his “Irish folklore trilogy” with the equally delightful Song of the Sea (2014) and Wolfwalkers (2020). Film critic Jeffrey Overstreet (author of the excellent Through A Screen Darkly) has become a particular champion of Cartoon Saloon films, arranging for the studio’s filmmakers to speak virtually with Overstreet’s students at Seattle Pacific University (Ngo 1).
While Moore’s Irish folklore trilogy is the studio’s best-known work, Cartoon Saloon showed from the beginning that they could do more. Their short films have ranged from stories based on Inuit folktales (From Darkness) to father-son stories employing fairy tale imagery (Old Fangs). The studio’s first feature-length film after Wolfwalkers went into very different territory: The Breadwinner, directed by Nora Twomey and adapted from Deborah Ellis’ 2001 novel, told the story of a girl living in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan providing for her family.
Cartoon Saloon’s latest film, My Father’s Dragon, is different again from their previous work. Directed by Twomey and released by Netflix in November 2022, it’s based on Ruth Stiles Gannet’s 1948 book of the same name. The book, which made the John Newberry Medal Honor list and has never been out of print, follows boy adventurer Elmer Elevator on his quest to visit Wild Island and rescue an enslaved dragon.
Previous Adaptations of My Father’s Dragon
The book has previously been adapted several times for the stage—most recently, a 2020 virtual production by students at the State University of New York (SUNY) Oneonta. In 1997, Masami Hata directed a movie adaptation for Japanese audiences. For this review’s purposes, I watched both adaptations. I ultimately decided not to delve much into comparing them. The SUNY Oneonta production is easy to find—an edited version combining several nights’ performances was made available on the school’s YouTube page. It has interesting moments but is fundamentally a play, and theatre is not my specialty. It is also a virtual project released during the pandemic’s height in 2020. It seemed unwise to critique any weaknesses I perceived, when they may be theatre conventions or technical limitations I wasn’t paying attention. I do recommend it to theatre fans interested in pandemic virtual theatre (which I’m certain will be the basis for several dissertations and books).
Hata’s adaptation is much harder to find. Shochiku Films released it in its original Japanese on VHS in 1998. In 2008, the French company Metropolitan Video released it on DVD with English subtitles, plus French and German dubs.1 I was able to view an online version in the original Japanese. I couldn’t follow the dialogue but found that the actions followed the book closely. Hata’s biggest addition is several song and dance sequences, which I assume were added because a famous singer appears in the cast: Elmer is voiced by Yûki Kitamura of Tetsuya Komuro Rave Factory. Since I know as much about anime as I know about theatre, I again decided to leave the discussion to specialists.
The Beginning of My Father’s Dragon (2022)
So, on to Twomey’s 2022 film. Like every Cartoon Saloon production, it’s a beautifully made movie that shows traditional animation can still have a unique impact. CGI may be faster to make and allow for more realistic effects, but there’s something about a well-drawn animated frame that other mediums can’t compete with.
It’s also a surprisingly melancholy film at first because it makes a clever choice with its plot: it takes Gannett’s core elements but rearranges them and adds details to Elmer’s background. Gannett’s book begins with “one day when my father was a little boy…” and describes Elmer meeting a talking cat, but his mother punishes Elmer for bringing the cat home (Gannett 3-5). The cat can talk, and when she learns that Elmer dreams of flying, she tells Elmer about the dragon held captive on Wild Island. The local animals keep the dragon on Wild Island because the island’s almost cut in half by a river, and they force the dragon to ferry them across (Gannett 9-11).
Elmer promptly decides to run away from home and rescue the dragon. No further details are given about Elmer’s home life other than the fact that he uses his father’s knapsack to carry supplies for his trip and that “he was so angry at his mother for being rude to the cat that he didn’t feel the least bit sad about running away from home for a while” (Gannett 13). Given that his mother whipped him for hiding the cat in their house (Gannett 5), this feels understandable. At least, it feels understandable for a 1940s children’s book—the period of books like Adam of the Road and Homer Price, where young boys could do almost anything and return home unscathed.
Twomey begins her film with a much more positive view of Elmer’s home life—a loving mother, a candy shop they own. Then, as often happens to families in fairytales, tragedy strikes. A move to a big city follows, where Elmer meets the cat (which his mother fears will lead to them being evicted). Elmer and his mother struggle to adapt to their new surroundings, as they have little money. When the cat tells Elmer about a dragon, he thinks he’s found exactly what he needs: something magical he can show people for money. Money will make sure he and his mother can still afford rent, and eventually buy a new candy shop.
Family Life in My Father’s Dragon
Purists may object that this new ending adds a new first act to the story and reshapes Elmer as a character. However, Twomey’s changes deal with the book’s least digestible element: Elmer’s parents are either malevolent or barely involved in his life. In Gannett’s book, Elmer’s mother is cruel, and his father is absent.
Gannett wrote two sequels which included Elmer’s father, but as more of a background character. In Elmer and the Dragon, Elmer and his new friend have various adventures (helping other talking animals and finding the dragon’s home) before Elmer decides it’s time to head home since he thinks it’s his father’s birthday (Gannett 146).
Note that Elmer thinks it’s his father’s birthday; he treats it like a friend’s party that he’d almost decided to skip. The dragon drops Elmer off at home, and his parents are glad to have him back after “two weeks” (Gannet 159). Elmer never tells them where he went: “I had an important job to do” (ibid).
In the second sequel, The Dragons of Blueland, the dragon finds that humans have captured his family and gets Elmer’s help to rescue them. Elmer returns home several days later. His parents are suspicious but unfazed by his mysterious trip. At the breakfast table, his father reads a newspaper reporting dragon sightings.
“Mr. Elevator dropped the paper and stared at Elmer. ‘Did you have anything to do with all this? I just don’t understand your strange trips away from home.’
‘Me?’ said Elmer, choking on a piece of toast. ‘Why, Father, you don’t mean you really believe all that nonsense, do you?’”
- Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon, 241-242
Throughout these three books, Elmer’s parents are carefully designed window dressing. They orbit about Elmer’s story but don’t influence it in any significant way. The same holds true for the narrator (Elmer’s child, but whose age or name is never established).2
Heroes Without Character Journeys
Structurally, the fact that Elmer has such undefined parents makes Gannett’s book efficient but hard to adapt. Why does he seek a dragon?
Because he wants adventure and has no reason to stay home.
What lessons does he learn? Not many.
Like Dorothy in L. Frank Baum’s The Wizard of Oz, Elmer is a well-formed character who doesn’t change much as the story continues. The story is all about the trip, not how the characters grow or whether they’ll achieve their goals. After all, as anyone who has read The Wizard of Oz knows, the heroes had all they needed from the start.
The difference is that Gannet had a better sense of plot structure than Baum. John Updike, in a New Yorker article celebrating the centennial of The Wizard of Oz, argued that Baum was a good writer who “rarely knew when to quit,” piling on magical scenes without developing the human side. At a certain point, magic minus character development has diminishing returns. Consequently, Updike believes the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz rightly “weeds out a number of extravagant beasts” and adventures (Dorothy crashing into a china village, etc.).
Gannett makes a smarter move than Baum when she includes marvelous things. She gives a light sketch of the human side (Elmer’s personality, his family life) but ensures every marvel is integral to Elmer’s quest. Before stowing away on a ship to Wild Island, Elmer packs the following in his knapsack: “chewing gum, two dozen lollipops, a package of rubber hands, black rubber boots, a compass, a tooth brush and a tube of tooth paste, six magnifying glasses, a very sharp jackknife, a comb and a hairbrush, seven hair ribbons of different colors, an empty grain bag with a label saying ‘Cranberry,’ some clean clothes, and enough food to last my father while he was on the ship” (Gannett 14). Elmer uses every single one of these items (yes, even the hair ribbons) to reach the dragon, sometimes in surprising ways. No surprise that in 1951, Kirkus Reviews commended Gannett for her “blend of thrifty story construction and fabulous fantasy.”
So, on the one hand, Gannet’s My Father’s Dragon has no character journey. On the other hand, it has a meticulously planned plot. Filmmakers can’t weed out extravagant elements from Gannett’s story because nothing is extravagant. Everything is machine-tooled to fit the story. Filmmakers must either follow the book meticulously or break it apart. Hata’s film subtracts nothing, only adding a couple of music scenes. Twomey chooses to break My Father’s Dragon apart and build something new.
The Temptation for Self-Preservation
As discussed earlier, Twomey’s My Father’s Dragon opens with a more defined and sympathetic mother, giving Elmer a primary goal (helping his family). After Elmer resolves to find the dragon and use it to help his family, he reaches the island. Things are not what he expected.
While Gannett had Elmer rescuing the dragon at the story’s end, Twomey has him release the dragon from its bonds almost immediately. Unfortunately, it turns out the dragon can’t fly very well. Furthermore, Elmer finds out there is a specific reason the dragon came to the island… which may tie into the fact that the island is sinking into the ocean. Meanwhile, the locals—talking animals led by a gorilla named Saiwa—want the dragon back, because they’ve been using his flight to keep the island afloat.
By changing why the residents enslaved a dragon, Twomey gives the villains a new dimension. For Gannett, Wild Island’s residents are “very lazy” animals (9), forcing a dragon to ferry them across the island. The cat emphasizes that the animals treat the dragon as a slave, “make him carry loads that are much too heavy, and if he complains, they twist his wings and beat him” (Gannett 12).
In Twomey’s film, the animals have clearly enslaved the dragon, but are motivated by self-preservation rather than laziness. Saiwa is the most threatening animal, but he is essentially a misguided leader who has lost his way. Like Abbot Cellach, the monastery leader in The Secret of Kells who becomes so obsessed with protecting the monastery that he neglects working on the Book of Kells, Saiwa is a protector so focused on immediate threats that he forgets what he stands for.
If the animals have fallen into the trap of using self-preservation to justify using others, Elmer is close to falling into that trap. After all, his primary reason for rescuing the dragon is that people will pay to see a dragon. Once he’s freed the dragon, he discovers a mystery that connects why the dragon came to the island with the reason it’s sinking. Getting the dragon’s aid and rescuing the island go hand in hand. Elmer’s mission must evolve.
Freedom or Community?
By changing Elmer’s mission, Twomey seems to deconstruct Gannett’s theme. However, what she truly does is deepen the theme’s implications. Gannett’s My Father’s Dragon is all about exploitation versus freedom. All well and good. We all want freedom. But, as seen earlier, the plot has a family-sized hole. Elmer can only help the dragon because he doesn’t really need his parents. Like the dragon, his community holds him back, so he leaves it.
Certainly, problematic or absent parents are common in children’s fantasy. Stories about children running away from home to have adventures were common in the 1940s. Therefore, it’s not surprising that Gannett cleverly builds her story around a dichotomy between freedom and imprisonment, where family obligations fall into the latter camp. Still, the question remains: is there a difference between freedom and anarchy? Are we designed to live (as Elmer effectively lives in the book) alone, barely connected to anyone?
Earlier, I mentioned film critic Jeffrey Overstreet. He has often spoken about one of his favorite films, which happens to explore this very question. In the 1993 French drama Three Colors: Blue, a woman named Julie loses her husband and son in a car crash. She cuts all social ties and lives alone in an apartment. Overstreet notes that blue is the color in the French flag symbolizing liberty (304), and Julie wants that. However, her plan runs into complications. As the film continues, blue becomes associated not so much with liberty as with a quotation Julie remembers from 1 Corinthians 13: “If I have not love….”
What is liberty if we can’t have love? Doesn’t love tie us to other people?
Twomey concurs with Gannett that enslavement is wrong. However, she makes Elmer’s journey into something more than obligation-free liberty. Elmer finds that getting the dragon off the island isn’t as easy as he thought. He and the dragon must do what Saiwa failed to do: help the island community without exploiting anyone. They cannot win by becoming abusers who intimidate others to accomplish their goals. There must be another way.
How Elmer and the dragon save the island is too good to spoil. I won’t say how Elmer eventually helps his mother, either. Suffice to say, Twomey finds a solution involving sacrifice and humility, not just adventurism.
While My Father’s Dragon doesn’t have the explicit Christian imagery of Moore’s Irish folklore trilogy (sacred wells, monks, etc.), it becomes a story about particularly Christian ideas. Elmer’s journey becomes not just a lesson about the terrors of enslavement, but about the balance between freedom and community ties, dedicated service, and true sacrifice. In this respect, it’s not only another impressive film in Cartoon Saloon’s output. It’s further proof that the studio has a knack for releasing fantasy films that explore what some may consider old-fashioned values and make them seem freshly relevant.
Notes:
1. I have added the French DVD’s information to the sources cited below, in case anyone with a universal or Region 2 DVD player would like to track it down. As of this writing, the film is available (with the original Japanese or the French dub) through Google Play in some territories: https://play.google.com/store/movies/details/Elmer_et_le_dragon_VF?id=qvL-bj55OMY
2. On this point, it’s interesting that the SONY Oneonta production starts with a narrator who is Elmer’s child, who says she doesn’t see her father much since he lives in another state. Absentee or problematic parents mesh well with the material. This even becomes ironic, given that Gannett called My Father’s Dragon “a family project” where her stepmother provided illustrations and her future husband chose the typeface (v).
Sources Cited
Elmer et le Dragon. Metropolitan DVD, 2008. ASIN B001GDJ9FM.
From Darkness. Directed by Nora Twomey. Cartoon Saloon, 2002. youtube.com/watch?v=B0ePFIp_4GQ.
“Elmer no Bōken.” Anime News Network. animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=1404.
Gannett, Ruth Stiles. Three Tales of My Father’s Dragon. Random House, 1998.
“My Father’s Dragon.” Shochiku Films. shochikufilms.com/product/my-fathers-dragon/.
“My Father’s Dragon.” https://enchantmenttheatre.org/north-american-tours/my-fathers-dragon/.
Ngo, Shelly. “Directors of Oscar-nominated movies visit ‘Film and Faith’ class.” SPU Stories, December 17, 2021. stories.spu.edu/articles/directors-of-oscar-nominated-movies-visit-film-and-faith-class/.
Old Fangs. Directed by Adrien Merigeau. Cartoon Saloon, 2009. youtube.com/watch?v=-sa0JxvjKLQ.
Overstreet, Jeffrey. Through A Screen Darkly. Regal Books, 2007.
“The Dragons of Blueland by Ruth Stiles Gannett.” Kirkus Reviews, June 15, 1951. kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/a/ruth-stiles-gannett-2/the-dragons-of-blueland/.
“SUNY Oneonta Theatre Presents: My Father’s Dragon.” YouTube, November 25, 2020. youtube.com/watch?v=AzML7PQ-RKY.
Three Colors: Blue. Directed by Krzysztof Kieślowski. MK2 Productions, 1993.
Updike, John. “Celebrating the Centennial of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.” New Yorker, September 25, 2000. newyorker.com/magazine/2000/09/25/oz-is-us.