Most critics of proposed developments and reveal clues and information that could distort the element of surprise and reveal the bottom and the resolutions of the works cited .. Darkness, Lord of Shadows, sends kobolds in the forest, their mission is to eliminate two unicorns always preserve the balance between Good and Evil. The shenanigans of the gnomes are almost fruit: one animal was suddenly freezing the horn cut the world into a winter of very bad omen!. Jack, the wild boy, and Lili, the princess, aided by elves and fairies of the forest, will do everything to prevent the destruction of the second unicorn that would result in the arrival of Evil. Frivolous and serious, openly artificial, programmed at the same time and wonder, stiff and sincere, serious and setter, the film combines the chromosome to the inventiveness, a bad taste in a near-perfect sense of the effect, retail and the beautiful image that sometimes in the dark prettiness, complacency or some vulgarity, while remaining constant, however spectacular. To the end, the story is here taken in its most literal reading, the most frontal and most respectfully Expected elves have ears and pointed slippers, princesses gestures Disneyesque, the forest is beautiful, evil red , muscular, horned and as monstrous as fascinating illumination is overloaded, the sights and scenery almost saturated .. The artificiality of about (a legend involving the themes and characters from the fairy tale) is served by the artificiality of impeccable staging, narrative clichés lead delicious visual cliches. Thus, the reference "literary," this tribute to European myths and legends, leads and flourishes in direct references to masters of the illustration (Arthur Rackham, Kay Nielsen ..) or Art (Symbolism) and reminders to the masterpiece of animation film ("Snow White" (the mirror, dwarves, forest, enchanted sleep of the Princess ..), "Fantasia" (as an adaptation of the Darkness memorable monster of "A Night on Bald Mountain") ..). The history allows itself allusions to Peter Pan as Beauty and the Beast, mediaeval legends and Greek myths as tales of Grimm, the treatment is sometimes linked to Disney, Jean Cocteau (crossing the mirror! ), but especially Ridley Scott mary kay pink discount himself (the huge pillars and unicorns are direct borrowing "Blade Runner", sculptures and brilliant material and organic world of darkness revives the memory of "Alien" ..) . The music, too, beautiful and inspired (one of the most memorable scores by Jerry Goldsmith), said sometimes the chromatic decorated by Maurice Ravel ("Daphnis and Chloe" in particular). Ultraréférentielle, the work arises for the director as a kind of exercise in style, after the Fantasy and Science Fiction, the filmmaker tries by the Heroic-Fantasy and magic, so professionally and beautifully !. Of course we can blame "Legend" its preciousness, its part folk and kitsch, the consensual aspect and fixed and final abstraction of its ornaments and its artifices, feigned by the generosity emphasis dazzling staging moves the eye more than the heart or the mind: no empathy or identification, the archetypes and the mechanisms of the body and lack of originality!. The film is nonetheless beautiful and successful, in any case, one of the most successful visions and the most significant of the story to the screen. Black and White, Light and Darkness, Day and Night, Beauty and Ugliness, Summer and Winter, candor and Monstrosity .. ; Themes are dwindling ad libitum initial confrontation. The lush garden of Eden where frolic Lili and Jack finds himself stuck in the snow and windstorms; Timberlake vigorous and constant rustling will succeed and the enormous strain that infernal palace in lieu of Darkness, The forest full of animals and flowers will be replaced by a maze of gigantic pillars Lili herself, first white, cheerful, smart and sun, will turn black, angular, dark and almost androgynous .. In both of the two camps, the wealth is in order; profusion of plants, and living beings in the beginning, profusion of threats, totems, giant sculptures, barriers and traps in the den of Darkness .. At the same time, both of the two adversaries, each of the two worlds (the forest of Jack, the accursed tree of Darkness) and deaf contain amazing similarities. the frontal horns of the unicorns are found in those, huge and black, the Prince of Darkness, dwarves and elves of the forest are beneficial for the gnomes and kobolds, streams and the basin magical turn into a putrid swamp and dangerous as tree roots bienvaillants hide fabulous treasures and ancestral, where the large tree that evil does brewing infernal dungeons .. Lili smoldering glances and ambiguous bad it defies Jack and goes to unicorns in defiance of all respect and caution!. One can even wonder if it has not knowingly caused the disaster (after all, it allowed the kobolds to neutralize and to capture fugitive sacred!) Gump and the people of the dwarves are first designated a so hostile and disturbing, Oona, the fairy, appears full of jealousy and scheming .. Meg, the witch aquatic coqueterie is a ridiculous (and deadly!), One of the servants of Darkness, but true false kobold leprechaun tries a vain attempt before revealing his true colors and get to finish the camps of Light, Darkness, himself, break a romance and leaves an unexpected vulnerability .. Exuberant proliferation and extraordinary signs, symbols and accessories, too excessive decorations and pictures .. while at the outset meant the chosen orientation. Lili Jack is challenged to retrieve the ring she threw in the source; Gump forced the then solve a puzzle, the young man has to fight and eliminate Meg, the witch and cannibal sticky that haunts the marshes before the confrontation Ultimate Darkness and with all his creatures. For Lili, the tests prove to be more psychological (but no less terrible for that!): The Princess has not managed to overcome his curiosity and contempt for the rules (it has violated the laws and approached (and touched!) Unicorns prohibited !) and is overwhelmed by guilt. This fault, operated by Darkness, the push to sink the "dark side", Lili will struggle to avoid being completely contaminated by evil .. ultimately, the fantasy and the magic hide the truth that evil is revealed to Jack as Lili, the real enemy is yourself and the ultimate goal of the course and result of the fight in self-discovery and in the acceptance and harmonization of its good and its bad part .. As Darkness, revenge, Jack throws before disappearing: "I belong to you, you can not kill me, we are bound like brothers". The sentence sounds like a curse recalling the sublime images of the sequence in which Lili, seduced by the darkness, dancing with the dark half of itself with this dress will turn her .. Indeed, there is no premium by more than these pictures carefully concocted, nothing supplants the forest except the wonderful cave striking Darkness .. Neither the action (rather languid!) Or plot (extremely simple and redundant) do not require as much care and attention that sets exploited, explored, studied and searched down to their depths!. Alive and constantly moving and animated (saturated air of pollen, petals, glitter and bubbles, this chair and the evil textures and reflections swollen insidious reptilian movements in Darkness ..), the sets are the echoes and the extension of the beings that pass through them, pretending to humanize them. Forest has never been so fantastic, so photogenic, so grand! Larger than life (and yet totally artificial and reconstituted in studios), ideal and truly magical, it seems frozen in generosity and magnificence almost suspicious!. The death and destruction are all empapillotées of gold, ornaments of monstrous, breath, vapor and claims phosphorescence. Furniture, decorations, accessories are proving suitable proportion to the size of the prince of the night, huge, huge .. The tables are drowning in endless glowing avalanches of food and beverages; massed around the statues along the walls, doors and ceilings; fires of hell burn continuously gaping fireplaces .. Everything is shiny, dusty, sandy and like gold dust, everything seems captured in a matrix, covered with a glittering film and bad. Flowers, leaves and grass tressautent in the breeze, and the foliage are bright with the sun, birds, bears, foxes .. affect a quiet docile stream between deaf delicate lilies, forget-me and umbels, a stream whose source dig a pool in the heart precious wet and too ornate wood .. And this enchanting forest is home to picturesque creatures facies of toys, ruddy dwarves, elves and fairies sharp bells .. But even more memorable is the race of the season, which in a few minutes, spin in the late spring the most extreme rigors of winter!. In an instant, the sky darkened, the clouds roll, a Storm manhandled the manes of the trees .. The spring water freezes and freezes, the clouds spoof rains rose petals and bleeding .. And when Jack finally manages to break the ice basin which he explored the depths and pull away, the forest is unrecognizable, white and frosted silver and blizzards, engulfed in the snow!. The outburst of the elements and nature corresponding to the control and execution of the first Unicorn, splendor hyperstylisée images, clever editing and soundtrack enhanced by dramatic choirs .., exalted for any s abandon finally the new reality of winter terribly fantastic. And like these beautiful pictures of Lili, panicked and lost, running out of breath in the snowy landscape, the characters "live" and live out the grandiose settings and standards, the environment by revealing resonances and connections narrow and very specific, sensitive, visceral, with beings that animate it. Archetypes and symbols whose concerns incredible and Manichean exclude, however, humor, and through the vagaries of human temperaments. Of course, the context does not lend itself to psychology and Tom Cruise lack of eloquence and charisma outside of her little child again, of course, necessarily schematic, these heroes suffering from stiffness and first degree on the side of the story ; dialogues sometimes pompous and almost laughable, do not give themselves any disrespect or offset .. More "visual" that truly embodied the protagonists here are about a work actor who takes over as the pantomime performance. Darkness (played by an unrecognizable Tim Cury (the star cult of "Rocky Horror Picture Show" more than ever and amazing transvestite, camped here one of the most memorable monsters of the 7th art!). And finding permanent duality themes and motifs, characters often work in pairs (the hero and his princess and the two dwarfs, and Jack Darkness, Darkness and his father both unicorns, of course, a couple of villagers, Gump and Oona ..). a ring (the stone half transparent and half black marking also the duality of the universe) to be found by pretending to Lili, a magic horn, armor, a shield and a sword mythical evil that chair, inflated breathing movements and cunning whose father enigmatic and demonic Darkness seems to be an integral part, this globe measuring time Gump, this dress cursed and bewitched into the arms of which Lili surrenders, this large mirror which arises Darkness (as Alice or Orpheus) as a new and terrifying reflection. And this plunge into the world of legends is the pattern size of the dive (jumps and dives into the source of Jack, heroes fall in underground prisons and large tree; plunged into a crevasse in the infernal rebel false kobold (a mummy comes to life and leads into the depths of the earth) ..) and its extension in the figure repeated sleep (sleep petrified of the nurse Lili (and his family); fading Jack Stamp (who thinks he fatally wounded by an arrow) and Lili with the emergence of Darkness; sleep of death of the unicorn; enchanted sleep Lili ..). food is often associated with the contamination, to the fault and trap (Lili steals cakes in the nurse, it offers cakes Jack (the better to handle and use it?) Darkness offers drinks and food to Lili, but one understands that this is the totally corrupt ..). And all the references to meals, food and nutrition have hellish connotations or cannibals, culminating in the episode of Dante Darkness kitchens . And similarly, the voice, the repercussions and those echoes in the cavernous lair of Darkness, the songs (Mermaid) falsely candid Lili, tone and hypnotic abyss of Darkness, the roar of Cetacea issued by unicorns .., sow often the disorder, the ambiguity and anxiety. It takes its place reverberating from point to point, reflective surfaces in large plates of metal bright, blazing a trail to victory Darkness and rushing into an abyss which the 'swallowed. It only remains to find Jack at Lili's ring and pass it to the finger in a kiss of love, winning the latest test. And in turn from his ring finger of his friend and offering him symbolically (as it binds to it!), it seals by this gesture and their kisses a union which no longer has nothing childish!. concocted for the United States, truncated , cut, lift and bastard, with a different soundtrack (and composed by the group Tangerine Dream), the European version, almost like the director had planned, and another still, provided with a few additions more or less relevant and appropriate, and finally, the redesign "director's cut" done on the later (on the occasion of a DVD re-release) and is probably the happiest and most telling of all these montages. Apart from accidents and through which disrupted the film (including the burning of the largest plateau and the destruction of the scenery of the forest!), "Legend" does not materialize the happy ending of his story!. shining example of mastery and Art of the image of his undeniable director, artificial and precious object close to affectation, "Legend" still captivates, despite its desperate lack of simplicity and humanity .. Through plans also superb enigmatic (the strange and disturbing paternal presence in Darkness; meet the unicorns ..) Ridley Scott still deviates slightly Installers of its programming. A detail, a look, the dark side of its charming "dolls," the fascination of his splendid "bad" .. spice up the blandness and luckily the dull simplicity of its history. The myths and legends of ancestral remains asleep underground, deep in the roots of old trees, the puzzles, monsters and spells have more reality .. and the only real shadow broods in itself, the bottom of a complex personality that feels dawn cowardice and contradictions of the real world and Accommodate, constant adjustments adulthood!. In the end, Jack and Lili separate (to better meet the next day and all days for new lessons about themselves!), each spinning in the opposite direction, leaving only the artificiality never emphasized the scenes to find the ordinary course of their lives. Splendid film too often been zapped from the uneven filmography Ridley Scott's "Legend" is well worth a visit and just the Top stories rehabilitation film. The blog offers a look personal (and subjective) of the great Dario Argento (and many other films and directors that I loved or hated).