Film review: Strings.

The film begins with a King writing a final letter to his son, before he kills himself, in which he asks him to take up his crown and strive for peace between his people and the rebels. However, the King's evil brother finds the note first, and wanting to get rid of the son and also wipe out the rebel faction, he concocts a plot to achieve his goal, and claim the throne for himself. The son soon finds himself an outcast from his land, and learns some shocking truths, whilst also falling in love.

Nothing new under the sun, right? Wrong. The characters are all string puppets.

And even this is not entirely new - think of the abysmal Team America, or the classic The Dark Crystal. However, what sets this film apart is the fact that these puppets do not represent humans. Their 'puppetness' is integral to the tale, and the strings that hold them are as important as the characters themselves.


The strings act as an implicit narrative device, which has given the film makers room to try out some innovative trickery; a city gate is not a door, but simply a wooden beam which gets lifted to a certain hight, thereby preventing strings from passing through, thereby preventing enemies from skulking into the city; a prison is not a building full of small separate cubicles, it's a simple grid of beams at a height through which the prisoners are thrown, leading to some poignant moments when an imprisoned family can see each other, they're in the same space, but cannot touch.

During a fight (of which there are quite a few), a character's weakest spot, and therefore the opponent's goal, is not the head or the heart, but the head string, the string giving the head it's movement. Sever that, and your enemy dies instantly; a child is born by carving a baby out of the best piece of wood you can find, and then waiting until the mother 'gives birth', which presents itself as a vibrating of her strings, followed by the baby's strings, it's life energy, snaking themselves down the mother's strings. Attach them to the lifeless body of the unborn, and the baby is born.

All truly imaginative, and quite high concept, yet working so very well.


The marionettes are not very detailed ; the only facial movements here are the eyes which open and close. This could have presented a problem, but thanks to the marvelous cinematography and some passionate voice acting, it doesn't. There is never any confusion as to who is speaking, and what is going on, as the film presents us with wonderfully conceived scene after scene. Some elements are beautiful and touching, such as the aforementioned birth scene, and some are quite shocking; burning string has never seemed darker.

However, the story remains rather formulaic. However innovative and original the film may be with it's visual trickery and narrative craftiness, the story is very predictable and therefore does not grip you as much as you may expect. It is a very typical fantasy/adventure bringing no big surprises.


This is possibly one of the most creative films of recent years, and is a good example of someone doing something new with a genre, which is laudable. Despite not offering anything new, story-wise, Strings is both beautifully bleak and unarguably imaginative. It carries some pointed and poignant messages about war, greed, love and fate, all wrapped up in a delightfully Shakespearean tale, with touching moments, enacted by some of the best classic puppetry you will perhaps ever see. Go watch this.

A 78 out of 100.