My wife and I found this as a bonus "short" on a DVD devoted to Lev Atamanov's acclaimed "The Snow Queen", a film which is said to have inspired Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki ("Spirited Away", "My Neighbour Totoro" et. al.) with a desire to work in animation. "Golden Antelope" is a highly imaginative 35-minute work, in vivid colour, which is well worth seeing in its own right.
A young village boy in the Indian Jungle protects the magic antelope (a gentle creature who drops golden coins as she runs) from the pursuit of a wicked, greedy rajah and his henchmen, refusing to reveal her whereabouts even when threatened with death. Aided by a cavalcade of beautifully animated tigers, elephants, bears and monkeys, the boy tracks the antelope to her forest home. Eventually he faces down the powerful but sensually depraved rajah: "you may kill me if you like, but you do not understand the value of friendship and loyalty".
The moral may be slight, but the artistic power of this short masterpiece is anything but. Atamatov's fluid animated style captures the grace, variety and subtlety of the movement of his cast, human and animal; the jungle backgrounds are sumptuous; the musical score recalls the oriental splendours of Rimsky-Korsakov and Borodin; and there is great humour as well as drama in this lovely example of the Russian animated tradition.
