Simba's Fear

For this blog, I'll be discussing this scene from The Lion King.

The scene fades from Mufasa's death to Simba roaming through a cloud of dust, looking for his father. His every expression indicates fear. When he hears the lone wildebeast, he is suddenly hopeful for just a moment, then he sees his father's body and is sunk back into fear and sadness. He tries to wake his dead father, then cries out for help with tears in his eyes.

The magical thing about this scene is the degree to which it follows the old filmmaking adage of "show, don't tell". Simba says nothing to indicate that his father is dead, or that he's sad, or afraid. Instead, those emotions are animated into him. The work on Simba's eyes in this sequence is actually quite fascinating. He says an extrordinary amount with the way he moves his eyes and eyelids.

Simba is a scared little kid, and we can instantly relate to this without any statement from him on the matter. He shows his emotions, he doesn't have to tell anyone he's sad, anyone can see it. In fact, he doesn't tell anyone his feelings, besides Scar, and this ends up setting up the film's second act of repressed emotion.