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PelicanMan

Pelikaanimies
Director: Lisa Helminen
Finland/Sweden, 2005, 86 min
In Finnish with English subtitles.
Recommended ages: 6 and up

Favourite children's performer Rick Scott will introduce this classic from Reel 2 Real's past ten years. PUMKIDS, his latest release with Pied Pumkin, won Best Children’s CD in the 2007 Canadian Folk Music Awards and Parents’ Choice and NAPPA Honors in the US.

The pelican that alights on the beach one summer afternoon is quite an extraordinary bird. He seems to be extremely interested in people, and, observing them attentively, he begins to edge closer and closer towards them. And then, the pelican makes a decision that will have drastic consequences: he decides to become human. Amazingly, the pelican’s transformation is so complete that nobody seems to notice whether he is a pelican or a human being. He even gets a job as a stagehand and finds himself an apartment. His landlady – who otherwise suffers from a bird allergy – doesn’t appear to notice a thing. However, 10-year-old Emil isn’t about to have the wool pulled over his eyes. He and his mother have recently moved into the same block of flats as the pelican. Emil realizes in a flash what’s up with the bird, but decides to keep it to himself; it’ll be their secret, just the pelican and him. Emil soon teaches his new friend how to read and, before long, the pelican discovers the delights of newspapers and books, poetry and science, love stories and philosophy. Emil, too, learns a great deal from the pelican and together they begin to explore the city. Then, one day, a girl named Elsa arrives on the scene. She is exactly the same age as Emil. At first, Emil is worried that Elsa could put an end to his friendship with the pelican, but he and the bird soon make friends with her. At the annual harvest thanksgiving party all the other neighbours are simply enchanted by the pelican’s charming ways. Then, Emil goes to visit his father in the country for a few days and the pelicanman is left at home alone. His bird-allergic landlady becomes suspicious and convinces the townspeople to capture the Pelican and place him in a zoo.

Critics have compared the film to everything from Felini's Amarcord to "the Finnish E.T." There is also a Chaplin-esque innocence and naiveté in Kari Ketonen's delightfully absurd portrayal of the Pelican who teaches us about our world as he experiences it for himself.

www.pelikaanimies.fi/pelicanman/en/pelicanmann.htm

Preceded by short film: Street Musique

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