wilkes@gatech.UUCP (C.T. "Tom" Wilkes) (08/02/84)
Bastian indeed calls the Childlike Empress "Moon Child" (or
"Mondenkind" in the German book upon which the movie is based,
"Die unendliche Geschichte" by Michael Ende). In the book, however,
the name has nothing to do with his mother; it refers to the
Empress's snow-white hair.
Several names differ among the English and German versions of both the book
and the movie. The luckdragon is called "Fuchur" in the German (pronounced
"foo-ch-oor"), but the translator probably was justified in changing it
to "Falkor." The land of fantasy is called "Fantastica" in the translation
of the book, but is called "Fantasia" in the movie; the better for
lip-synching, I guess, since the latter is actually
closer to the German book's (and movie's) "Phantasien" (accented on the
second syllable). Speaking of lip-synching, I saw the film while in Germany
back in June; the scenes with Atreyu and Bastian were dubbed from the
English, while in the American version, the scenes with the Night-hob
(Nachtalb), Rockbiter, and so forth looked dubbed from the German.
For instance, the Night-hob calls his mount "Stupid-bat" in English to cover
for the German "Fledermaus." (Interestingly, the audience in Germany was
almost entirely adult; but then, the book was supposedly the top seller there
for three years.)
There are some other interesting differences between the movie and
the book. Actually, the movie only covers the first half or so of
the book -- Bastian must find his way back to "reality," which
occupies the latter half of the book and is (to me at least) even
more interesting than the half which appears in the film. I won't
spoil much of it for you -- read it. However, in the part which *was*
filmed, we are missing an interesting example of tail-recursion
(tale-recursion? :-) ) which appears in the book: when Bastian
continues to refuse to believe that the Never-Ending Story can really
involve him, Moon Child must resort to finding the Old Man of the
Wandering Mountains (easier said than done), who is writing down
everything in a book called (you guessed it) the Never-Ending Story.
The Empress convinces the Old Man that the only way to persuade
the human child to save them is for the Old Man to read back
"the Story so far." So he starts reading from the beginning, with Bastian's
visit to Coreander's book shop. Since the Old Man
is simultaneously describing in his book the event of reading it back --
well, you get the drift. The unbounded recursion proceeds until
interrupted from the outside by Bastian, who of course comes to the
Empress's rescue.... interesting for a pre-"Goedel, Escher, Bach" book.
-- TW
PS. Perhaps a better speaker of German may correct me, but I think the title
"unendliche Geschichte" may be a play on words on the author's name,
Ende ("end"). Perhaps it also means "die un-Ende-liche Geschichte"
("the un-Ende-like Story)? :-) (Given the puns in the book, I wouldn't
put it past him....)
--
Tom Wilkes
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