Fairy Tale Spotlight: The Point (1971 Film)

[This blog includes a lot of spoilers for this movie, but quite a bit of it is held back.]

Back when I was very young, most of the movies I watched were recorded onto BetaMax tapes from TV. They were almost always 70's films, and I would watch them over and over as I saw fit. Lately, I've been trying to rediscover these movies to see if they hold my attention to this day. Sometimes that is a difficult proposition since maturity can rather mess up the fascination we held as a child, but I am happy that the movie of this blog still managed to make me smile.

The Point is an animated movie made in 1971 about a city where everything had to have a point of some kind. Like... a physical point. Even their heads all had points on them. The story centers around the character Oblio who was born with a rounded head which made him different than anyone else in the city. This naturally turned a lot of heads and made him something of a spectacle.

What's interesting about this movie is it seems like it's about to get very political, and maybe that was the "point," but I find myself not really getting political vibes with this movie. As it turned out, everyone in the city liked Oblio and so just let him be who he was. Even so, Oblio would always wear a pointed cap, if anything just so he could fit in with everyone. Nobody was really bothered either way.

Still, there was a villain who did not like him and managed to convince the king that Oblio did not belong, and that there was a law that explicitly said that everyone should have a point. The king who really liked Oblio was conflicted over this but the phrase "The law is the law." kept being repeated to him, which led to the poor boy's banishment to a place called "The Pointless Forest."

At this point the fairy tale aspects of the movie really ramp up. It begins to feel a bit more like Oz here, and I was very pleased with what the boy found there. Without spoiling the whole experience, the boy ends up seeing a lot of strange thing which seem to be random and... pointless. But this boy... Let me tell you about this boy. Oblio has this curious way of examining the world.

Oblio is not really a very emotional boy. He is constantly trying to figure the puzzles out in this world. I was stunned with the conclusions that were coming to him as he was seeing, what looked to me, to be seemingly random nonsense within the Pointless Forest. It was at this point that I felt like I understood what he was doing. This little prodigy was high-priesting... and in a fairy environment no less.

I don't want to spoil the ending or the main encounters in the Pointless Forest. I actually do recommend the movie. They are all entertaining in their own way, and there are a lot of them. I do want to point out some other things though.

Oblio does have a canine companion: a pointy dog named Arrow. He is super cute and makes the film more charming. There are also a number of very strange musical segments where the film falls into some very surreal imagery... like Yellow Submarine surreal. I like them, but I don't fully understand them. Some of the images are a bit disturbing as well, but nothing too bad. It was the early 70's, man.

If you are interested in seeing this film, it is completely free on Amazon Prime Video, but you can also just pull the entire thing up on YouTube. It is about an hour long. The first part of the film feels like it is more for children, and it might be somewhat hard for you to watch. However when the kid hits the Pointless Forest, it gets extremely interesting. I consider this to be a good movie that doesn't try too hard to shove any "points" into your face too hard. And I love the main character for who he is. At the end of the day, he really was his own person, and that's why I have a lot of respect for little Oblio.

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