The Navigator: A Medieval Odyssey

1988 "An Odyssey Across Time."
6.6| 1h32m| en| More Info
Released: 16 September 1988 Released
Producted By: New Zealand Film Commission
Country: New Zealand
Budget: 0
Revenue: 0
Official Website: https://www.nzonscreen.com/title/the-navigator-1988
Synopsis

Cumberland, 1348. The plague is spreading in medieval England. The remote village of little Griffin is also threatened. But the 9-year-old boy has a recurring dream that holds the key to a tiny hope of survival: a lake with a coffin floating on it. A white church with an iron cross. A falling glove. A falling silhouette. A torch tumble through a dark shaft into infinity. With his brother he recognizes in it a prophecy to escape the Black Death. So they embark with a few men on a journey to a distant cathedral, where they want to set up an iron cross as an offering to God. Her path leads them through a deep and dark mine shaft into an unknown land and completely outlandish time - into the present-day New Zealand of the 1980s.

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Reviews

Kattiera Nana I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.
Solemplex To me, this movie is perfection.
Dotsthavesp I wanted to but couldn't!
Donald Seymour This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.
Gabriel Negrusa I watched this movie with little expectations and it managed to surpass them. I stood and thought why it isn't more acclaimed, since it has many elements that stand up compared to more well known films. I realized Navigator's main flaw is it doesn't succeed to induce the right state of mind to the audience from the very beginning. If you watch Terminator 2 expecting a realistic SF you'd find many things making no sense, but if you watch it with the action movie conventions in mind you find everything it's on it's place. Every single movie needs to make the viewer familiar with it's rules and conventions, to set him in the right mood. Navigator has a pretty ambiguous beginning, and it's not very consistent after that either, leaving me confused at times if i'm watching a kids fairytale with some serious undertones, an actually profound artistic movie, or just an exploitation on the concept of "what if medieval people traveled in our time".Otherwise everything else about Navigator: A Mediaeval Odyssey is great. The characters are very well designed, when i was a kid i had myself an idol like Connor (we probably all did), the man that is a natural leader, knows every time what is right and doesn't afraid of anything. But in real life even this kind of persons are still human beings, they mess up sometimes, they lose hope sometimes, no one's perfect, and i really liked this little touch of humanity Connor has. Ulf even though he's the oldest in the group he's the clumsiest and most insecure. He's still a child at heart, even more than Griffin, the actual child. The fact that his friends care about him so much despite him being more of a liability to their mission is really touching. Overall all medieval characters are very realistic compared to what we see in the genre.Maybe some people that watched this movie would expect the reactions of the medieval villagers to the modern city to be different, more powerful. The truth is, it's hard to imagine how would such people react in a situation like that, and i can't think of films that get this aspect right and believable, but i think Navigator comes quite close. There was a lot of unknown during that ages, and for the villagers of a remote mine everything was new, a big medieval city would be just as new and strange as a modern city with skyscrapers, cars and trains. They expected to see strange things, and they saw strange things, not too much reason to get overexcited.Somewhere about 6-7.
endem This is a parable regarding the salvation of the community through the vision and sacrifice of one innocent boy.I stumbled onto this movie at an "art house" back in the day and was impressed by and absorbed into the bleakness of the medieval miners' lives. As the story continues into then contemporary New Zealand there are a few amusing moments, but the gags are mostly predictable. One nice touch was how the modern foundrymen and the "visitors" found a common "language" in casting the cross. It seemed apparent to me that the boy represented Jesus Christ, the Black Death, spiritual death and the placing of the cross atop the highest spire symbolic for the elevation of faith in Christ to redeem the world. The end of the story defines this view.
babbelsquee Some of the critiques I've read of this, from others on the database, complain about the clumsy imagery or the accents. Get a grip. The point isn't linguistic accuracy, or any other kind of "accuracy" but rather the theme and motifs. In 1348 a frightening "illness" swept Europe, killing thousands. People didn't understand what caused the illness, only that it offered a horrifying death. This movie is as much a critique of "christendom" as it is of contemporary politics. If the US nuclear submarine is for some too clumsy an analogy to the black death, imagine the fall out of nuclear bombing as analogous to the black death. The pervasive silent killer. This movie was fantastic, for its imaginative plot, the interesting motifs and imagery, the concept of a small boy's vision, and the possible universes.
fes_net I wish I could have a few minutes to hear Vincent Ward's take on the marketing of the movie, because I never have seen anything so mis-marketed. I could see some US film distributor scratching his head and saying, "gee? how are we going to make this dreary arty movie about the black plague appeal to the lowest common denominator of the US market?", "Ok, let's slap sci-fi and time travel on it..."Navigator is a beautifully filmed, well acted, impressive movie that (hear this!) has nothing to do with time-travel, or "monks dodging 20th century stuff"...it is an allegory! (look that up). What Mr. Ward does is, rather than rely on expensive and silly special effects to spice up fantasy dream sequences, simply juxtaposes 20th century settings with the 14th century time frame of the film to give life to a boy's fantastic visions, and story told to give hope and entertain the desperate people of his village...his visions, done in color and film with the 20th century as it backdrop is as fantastic to the people of his village, as if someone from the 14th century actually did travel through time. With premonitions of the arrival of the plague to his village (which turn out to be heeded), the villagers of a winter bound poor community hover in fear and look for any omen good or bad to give them some sign of what is coming. With a fantastic narration of a quest (ala the holy grail) to mount a spire on a church in a faraway land, that if done before sunrise would save the village, a boy describes his fantasy which is shown to us, complete with sea monsters and dragons (all represented by 20th century contrivances).For those seeking real time travel, stick to the true sci-fi, you will be disappointed...For those interested in seeing a dark, moving tale of the desperation that must have been felt by the people who lived through the plague without understanding what it really was...a tale where the fantastic is really our wonderfully mundane world...check this out.