Using a series of tape recorded interviews with Georges Remy over thirty years ago by Numa Sadoul, this documentary builds a visual element and also includes contributions from others to deliver a documentary that was a lot more interesting than I expected it to be. You see for me I have never been more than a casual reader of the Tintin books and drew them from my local library at the same time as getting the Asterix books so I must admit that I wasn't too bothered about finding out more about the creator himself.
So it was a slow start for me but gradually the film drew me in because it does such a good job of maintaining the link between the man and his books, which I think is important for those viewers who are into the books but not the wider world thereof. Thus we get an understanding of the background that the strips and books were written against and how changes within the man, his employment and his country are shown within the changes in his work. Later in the film we mainly focus on the man himself but by then I was mostly engaging thanks to the nature of the delivery before this point. Of course the viewer does need to have at least some interest in the Tintin books beyond them just being comics they read as a child but the film does do a good job of trying to come and meet the audience halfway.
Overall then an interesting documentary that does try hard to overcome the fact that it was always going to appeal to a small audience no matter how good it was. Accordingly it does need you to at least care about the books and characters but it does help those of us who previously knew nothing of Hergé to have something that is still worth seeing.
So it was a slow start for me but gradually the film drew me in because it does such a good job of maintaining the link between the man and his books, which I think is important for those viewers who are into the books but not the wider world thereof. Thus we get an understanding of the background that the strips and books were written against and how changes within the man, his employment and his country are shown within the changes in his work. Later in the film we mainly focus on the man himself but by then I was mostly engaging thanks to the nature of the delivery before this point. Of course the viewer does need to have at least some interest in the Tintin books beyond them just being comics they read as a child but the film does do a good job of trying to come and meet the audience halfway.
Overall then an interesting documentary that does try hard to overcome the fact that it was always going to appeal to a small audience no matter how good it was. Accordingly it does need you to at least care about the books and characters but it does help those of us who previously knew nothing of Hergé to have something that is still worth seeing.