The Small One (1978)

User Rating:

7.7/10   

Director:

Don Bluth

Writers:

Vance Gerry (writer)
Charles Tazewell (book)

Release Date:

16 December 1978 (USA)

Genre:

Animation | Short | Family

Plot:

A young Judean boy tries to sell his beloved old donkey to someone who would care for him as much as he does.

Plot Keywords:

Boy | Donkey | Surrealism | Jesus Christ | Christmas

Cast

Sean Marshall	...	Boy (voice)
William Woodson	...	Tanner (voice)
Olan Soule	...	Father (voice) (as Olan Soulé)
Hal Smith	...	Auctioneer (voice)
Joe Higgins	...	Guard (voice)
Gordon Jump	...	Joseph (voice)

Runtime:

USA:26 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Certification:

USA:G

Company:

Walt Disney Productions

Trivia:

Was originally directed by Dick Sebast.

Soundtrack:

A Friendly Face

Fascinating, with a somewhat controversial ending.

I guess the outcome of a movie always depends on your expectations. Before seeing this one, I expected an emotional and innocent story told from a child's perspective. The first twenty minutes I was completely satisfied. It was a typical storyline for children; a child must face the realities of everyday life despite of their own needs. Only after that the Christian context was introduced. As I had no reason to expect such content, I was absolutely shocked. All I could think was why this nice little movie had to turn out to be Christian propaganda.

Now please do not judge me just yet, think it over again. In the movie, we see people of different occupation and even ethnic background. From the children's perspective most of these characters are presented either as evil or odd, caricatures from the adults' perspective. Even in the drawing style this can be seen, as those characters contributing to the Christian content are drawn more realistically. If this movie maybe can not be called racist, it is clearly propaganda. Now if you think I'm taking this too seriously, I would like to remind you that although this is not a serious movie, children are the group most vulnerable to this kind of non-subtle propaganda; we adults can see through it.

As an atheist I don't mind being introduced to different religions and religious habits. A little bit of religious touch does not hurt even mainstream movies; it is just realistic. However I find it strongly questionable to glorify one religion with this kind of historical fiction. It is an old trick used by political and religious leaders; make up fantastic stories of their own background, or even the background of their ideology. It just is dishonest, so stories with their roots in mythologies should either be realistic or either point out something important rarely noticed. But a made up story attempting to glorify the figures of Christianity... no good. Then again, the symbols and habits of religions are very deep in our culture, and therefore the attempts to create stories with no religious contexts are often doomed to fail. I do not demand that, I just demand fair play.

Well, it IS a good Christian children's propaganda movie and it WAS done almost thirty years ago. Apart from the ending, it is very fascinating for pretty much everyone. The songs are pretty good, even the Finnish translations I heard. Some scenes are slightly intimidating, so the smallest children should maybe not see it. (Although nothing bad really happens, the atmosphere might be frightening, as the crew of this movie really knew their jobs.) Personally I would only give this for my children to see when they are old enough to see through the method (or small enough not to recognize the intertext), as I would want them to get a realistic idea of different religions.