The Sorcerer's Apprentice (1978)

Excellent but underrated film

When a movie has you begging for it to end not even half way through it's pure crap. We've all seen this movie and this characters millions of times, nothing new in it. Don't waste your time.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

At first I was incredibly skeptical about this, but it turned out to be something really special.I read the the book at school - quite a lot of years ago. And as I remembered it, it was quite good. But what almost made me not watch it was the style of animation. It reminded me of South Park but just more old school and stiffer in the way it's animated. I thought this is not going do be interesting but it was the opposite. Especially the style of animation made its atmosphere and deepness. It creeped me out some times.The story is good. But what makes it is the way it's told. You see the main character become a grown-up in some ways and it's darkness and violent moments. One of the main feelings is despair in this movie.Its really hard to explain but this is really something unique as far as I know. The combination of animation, the story, the character development and music is just unique.Everybody should see this.

I must have watched Karel Zeman's The Fabulous Baron Munchausen a year ago. I loved this movie for its sense of wonder and use of colors together with silhouettes. But I didn't get to watch another Zeman movie until now.Krabat reinforces my belief that Karel Zeman is one of cinema's lost visionaries. In the two movies I saw he showed a mind capable of inventing situations full excitement, humor and magic. His world belonged to the old fairy tales, early science fiction writers like Cyrano de Bergerac (a character in Munchausen), Jules Verne and writers of tall-tales like the Baron himself. I think it's this love for the past that makes his word so timeless; like a bedtime fairytale that one never tires of hearing.In Krabat we meet an orphan boy traveling by his own, enjoying his freedom and opportunity to find adventures. But with the coming of Winter he needs shelter. One night, sleeping in a barn he's summoned by a raven to a mill. There he meets a man who offers him a job as apprentice there. Of course this man is actually a sorcerer who also wants to teach his black magic. Krabat soon discovers he's just one of the many boys at the mill.Many times Krabat tries to run away, but the sorcerer always foils his plans. Furthermore, Krabat is anxious that the day will come when the sorcerer will challenge him to a duel. Every winter a boy fights the sorcerer, and Krabat is weary of seeing his friends die. Plus he has discovered love in a peasant girl in a nearby village.This is a clear and simple good vs. evil story, fueled by the power of love. Imagination and suspense carry on the narrative. One is always on edge when the sorcerer and another boy fight, or when Krabat breaks into his chamber to read from his magic book. And we're always waiting for the sorcerer's new transformation: he appears under many guises - snake, crow, wild boar, cat - and is nearly omnipresent.as well as the style of animation. How to explain it? It looks like woodcuts, it doesn't have the fluidity of hand-drawn animation. And yet this strangeness makes it alluring, different from anything else we know today of animation.Although I love Pixar, I regret that its style has come to dominate the public's conception of animation, much like Disney did before Pixar. It's when watching a movie like Krabat that one remembers what a rich world animation is, how many styles it can have and it's virtually limitless. Krabat is not just a good animated movie, but it also serves to show that animation can follow other ways.

At first, when I watch this film online (subtitled), I had confuse the title for the poem version by German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe that inspired French composer Paul Dukas for his famous musical piece with the same title. But really, the film is based on a book called "The Satanic Mill" by a Otfried Preußler and the Sorbian folk tale upon which the book is based. I thought the cutout animation is really good, it's like the illustrations of some ancient book come to life. Why, The National Film Board of Canada used that technique for their 1991 animated short, inspired by the legends of the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest - "Lord of the Sky".Well anyway, the film is about Krabat, a beggar boy in early 18th century Lusatia, is lured to become an apprentice to an evil, one-eyed sorcerer. Together with a number of other boys, he works at the sorcerer's mill under slave-like conditions while learning black magic, such as guising himself as a raven and other animals. Every Christmas one of the boys has to face the master in a magical duel of life and death, where the boy never stands a chance because the master is the only person who is allowed to use his secret grimoire: "The Koraktor", or the "Force of Hell".One Easter while performing an annual ritual near a small village, Krabat meets a girl (whom he dubbed the "Kantorka" or "The girl who sings") and falls in love with her. But Krabat has to keep his romance secret in order to protect her. After witnessing his friends one after one being helplessly slaughtered by the master every Christmas, Krabat starts to sneak up at night to study the forbidden book. On the last page of the book, Krabat finds a phrase saying: "Love is stronger than any spell."That's all I could tell you folks, you will have to see the film for yourself how it ends. Overall, I enjoy this dark-fantasy film. And one thing I should tell you folks is that watching this film is my first glimpse at animation from Czechoslovakia.

Unbelievable story, excellent animation, treasure of cinematography.. What more to say?I am actually happy I didn't have a chance to see this movie when I was a kid, because I would not be able to sleep for very very long time.. Sooo scary and dark, so much of fear, and I don't remember when last time I felt so helpless while watching a movie..it is not another naive fairy-tale where the Good beats the Bad somehow automatically and you are just witnessing that with smile on your face 'couse you expected that.. Easily beats most of late horror movies just by atmosphere, no special tricks needed.. recommend to everyone, you wont be disappointed.. amazing, 10 of 10, no questions asked..