Waking Sleeping Beauty

Last night i had a bit of a surprise, i had always been fascinated by disney animation, and growing up during the disney renaissance, and living now through the disney revival, i was intrigued by Waking Sleeping Beauty, a documentary detailing the rebuilding of the animation department during the late 80's and early 90's. The film is produced by the Walt Disney Company itself, and yet provides an honest and unbiased insight into the period between the production of The Black Cauldron and The Lion King.

The film is notable for the fact that it uses no new filmed interviews, instead it uses new audio recordings and archive footage, most of it filmed guerrilla style without permission by employees of the animation department, as well as vintage recorded interviews and clips from various disney movies of the era. The film starts by detailing the state of the animation department at the height of its success, just before the release of the lion king, when the money was pouring in and animation had become a powerhouse again, the movie then details the era from 1984 up to this point, showing the rebuilding of the animation department.

The film, despite being released by Walt Disney Pictures, offers an unbiased and honest account of this period, the film openly depicts the infighting and tension of this period. The company was being restructured and Michael Eisner was brought in as chairman, and he brought in Jeffrey Katzenberg, his colleague from Dreamworks. He quickly ruffled feathers by personally editing The Black Cauldron, to make it more child friendly, and insisting that he wanted to win the 'Bank of America Award'. The artists were terrified they were going to be layed off, they were finally unceremoniously evicted from the inking and painting building on the disney lot, and forced to move into a delapidated warehouse in glendale, a big shock for the department who developped Cinderella and Peter Pan. From the ashes the animation department rose into flame and produced some of the best animated films of all time.

Overall i found the film to be surprisingly honest, the film despite being produced by the Walt Disney Company, doesn't sugar coat any of the events portrayed, and is honest about the sleepless nights, the long hours, the carpal tunnel and the overworking, and is refreshingly honest about the difficulties of working for the Walt Disney Company, including dealing with difficult bosses, including Roy E Disney, Walt's nephew.

Waking Sleeping Beauty is a surprisingly watchable film, and doesn't sink to the salacious depths of other Michael Moore style documentaries, and manages to be surprisingly balanced, not having a singular narrative voice, but many, the film, if one has to see a point of view, is essentially from the point of view of the artists, and tends to empathize with them rather than the management or the marketing department, interesting considering that disney is a mega-corporation known for marketing themselves as being like a family. Waking Sleeping Beauty is a surprisingly fascinating look into one of the most tumultuous and groundbreaking decades in the history of animation. Rating: A-