Official Synopsis
When a woman named Mia falls for a man simply named ‘The Aerialist’, they both fall into a dreamlike world, separated and struggling to find each other.
This is my first Cirque du Soleil experience and let me just say it was amazing to watch. From what I’ve been told in the past about the show, it was more of a circus than a full blown story. Thankfully, it turned out to be the latter and the nearly wordless journey fully focused on how it could visually top itself from set to set. Through the spectacular visuals, the story is fully maintained, which is one of the most amazing parts of Worlds Away. The story does stray here and there, but it brings itself back together at the appropriate times. The visuals help to fill the space between the moments, though. From pirates dancing on a ship above the water to asian captors trying to put a wedge between the lovers, or even a timeless tour through the 60s love generation in Britain; this is quite a wonderful journey and spectacle.
All of this is led by the very talented Erica Linz, playing our female protagonist Mia. She starts it off with a simple stop at a side-road carnival. Linz’s Mia paints the perfect picture of innocence while looking for her other half, and creates a place of stability in Cirque du Soleil where viewers can be reminded of why they’re taking a tour of this wonderful world. It’s tough to believe that Linz’s only credit on IMDB.com is this show and a stunt double in Homefront for Izabela Vidovic. This actress deserves more opportunities, and I hope she gets them.
Mia’s lover is played by Igor Zaripov, who matches her moves in every way. While I can’t say his presence is as dominating as Linz’s, he certainly somewhat controls the room when he’s in it, if not only to add and push the story. His acrobatic talent is quite impressive, as is his silent acting with Linz’s Mia. He’s a great opposite of her and fits well as the other lover and protagonist in the show/film.
As for the entire show, again it’s quite good. The majority of the show really fit the bill for what it was trying to do, though it does get lost here and there with the main story (the visuals make up for it). While I can’t compare it to other Cirque du Soleil shows, I can tell you that my kids and I were just glued to the screen the entire time. At first, they didn’t quite understand why there wasn’t any dialogue, but soon after they completely understood where the story was going. If a child can be mesmerized and wrapped up in a show like this and still understand the story without someone telling it verbally, then I would imagine that Cirque du Soleil has done its job. No part of it seemed long in the tooth, as the visuals just kept stimulating the mind. I absolutely loved it, as did they.
As for the 3D portion of the film, it was spectacular.
(Reviewed in Passive 3D)
I’ve reviewed 5-7 3D films and I now understand the difference between something shot in 3D and something converted into 3D. The amount of distance and depth that you get with something shot in 3D is simply breathtaking. For example, the first act where the folks in the water show up to dance, the distance between the foreground and background is properly layered. This means that the picture does indeed jump out at you and when someone splashes water in the foreground then it stays in its proper field of depth. My daughters were absolutely in awe of this first act and just were beside themselves with how good the 3D looked. I myself was also in awe of it.
Another fine example of how well the 3D worked is when Mia is first entering the tent of the dream world. As she is walking, she has trails of fog at her feet. The fog defines the depth of the scene, as you can see it roll individually in lines at her feet and show exactly the right amount of distance between the foreground and background. It’s a simple element to the shot, but it really shows how well the 3D works in this release.
To be blunt, this is the best looking 3D I’ve seen on a Blu-ray release to date. It’s leaps and bounds over movies that are converted to the format. It does everything visually right and, more importantly, the 3D is proper for this type of content. Huge sets that have people jumping, leaping and moving in such extraordinary ways really brings the 3D out and only enhances the experience. Not many films converted to 3D can say the experience is enhanced by the their conversion.
As for the Blu-ray portion of the film, despite some darker moments that were few and far between where graininess and compression reared its ugly head, it was nearly perfect. Gorgeous sets, fantastic lighting and beautiful costumes/make-up helped to bring out the right colors in the HD upgrade of this show. You won’t find any color banding or bad compression issues in the transfer. The HD is just as good as the 3D experience and this is what Blu-ray 3D should be.
The audio portion of this release comes to you in 5.1 DTS-HD, and you will particularly love it once the Beatles music starts. It sounds pretty darn sweet coming through the right system. For those of you griping right now about 7.1, please… most people aren’t there yet to enjoy it. Although, I would love to hear it in 7.1 at some point.
Finally, as for features, here’s what you should expect:
– Making Worlds Away
– A Day in the Life with Erica Linz
While there isn’t much here in terms of quantity, the ‘making of’ featurette is pretty solid. You get to see what they did and how they did it in a very nice featurette. The ‘A Day in the Life with Erica Linz’ is interesting, but not as solid as the first featurette. I’m shocked that James Cameron didn’t do commentary on this release with director Andrew Adamson. That dialogue might have been really quite interesting.
