Where Is Fantastica in 'The Neverending Story'?
From Neue Constantin Film and Warner Bros. Pictures' 'The Neverending Story' (1984) Turn around. Look at what you see... Forgive us for singing the oh-so-80s soundtrack to "The NeverEnding Story," the fantasy movie that takes place in the—sadly—fictional land of Fantastica. From flying luckdragons to enigmatic Sphinxes, this realm is truly as fantastical as it sounds. When Michael Ende penned the book on which the film was based, he leaned on the teachings of occult thinker Rudolf Steiner for inspiration. Steiner is a recurrent figure here at Places of Fancy. Anthroposophy, the movement he founded, has its fingerprints on filmmakers as diverse as Ari Aster , Andrei Tarkovsky, Jordan Belson, and Alexander Kluge. With "The NeverEnding Story," Ende visualized Steiner’s idea of moral imagination being able to forge the path to free will. Another muse was his father Edgar, whose surrealist paintings gave rise to the Minoudjin, the city of ghosts, and the Spo...
