Are we human because we gaze at the stars? Do the stars gaze back? That is the quetion across the universe.
Neil Gaiman's short story Stardust is brought to life in a visual panoply of fairy tale images. A star, a beautiful and evil witch, a pirate of persuasion and suasion and a woebegone shopboy who is not just a shopboy. And did we mention ghosts? lots and lots of ghosts.
Stardust is not a story for children - behest full of gruesome deeds and motives. Yet it is wonderful to behold Claire Danes back on the screen this season [ just recently seen in Evening and last time at Toronto International Film Festival live at the gala for Stage Beauty ] - a fallen star [ literally ] whose entity is desired by many sides for the power she holds. For the coven, the star will bring eternal beauty to the witch Michelle Pfeiffer and her sisters, for the shopboy bringing back the star will bring him the beauty and hand in marriage of Sienna Miller, the apple of his eye Victoria. The clumsy mannered boy who has grown up without the love of a mother pledges to the Victoria [who has already the attraction of the most handsome lad in the village] that he will do anything, go to London, cross the ocean and one night together they see something fall from the sky, perhaps a falling star - yes, he will bring her back that star. To fetch the star, the boy must go outside the walls of Wall, an enclave village and bring back the star in a week.
The adventures are the stuff of fantasy and fairy tales and are at cross purposes with the vying of the nasty brothers for the throne to the kingdom - brothers of the ghostly and corporeal kind - the ghosts having met their demise in most foul ways. Even just moments after seeing their father on the deathbed, one of the brothers is already offed out the window and down the side of the castle and is resurrected as a corpse beside the forms of his late brothers. But it is all done in high humour - as is the rest of the Stardust.
The boy obtains his star with whom he exchanges witty banter - a style that is carried through the film. Just on the precipice of impending doom they find themselves swept up aboard a most peculiar flying boat with a cast of pirates led by Robert de Niro doing his finest Errol Flynn with a twist? Does it get any better than this?
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