The Disney movie Tarzan was released in 1999 and directed by Chris Buck and Kevin Lima, we follow the story of a young orphan boy named Tarzan. In the start of the film we see a family that is escaping from a burning boat and when they do they find themselves on a on an island in the jungle and they start to build themselves a home in the form of a treehouse. We also see another family in the beginning of the film, but this family is a little different, they’re gorillas.
The father Kerchak is playing with his newborn son, and in the night while the mother Kala is holding him the little one sees a frog and begins to play with it. This leads the newborn into a leopardess named Sabor who ends up killing the child. The ape parents see what is going on but aren’t fast enough to react in time. While the group of gorillas is traveling Kala hears the sound of a baby crying, desperate to see who it was in the hopes that it was here child she runs to where she hears it and what she finds is not what she expected.
She finds the child named Tarzan and escapes with him away from Sabor who killed his parents as well; Tarzan is now her new son and he struggles to fit in with the gorillas not knowing that he is human and not one of them. This film shows us something important that we should take away and that is family is where the heart is. There some scenes in this film that prove this such as when Tarzan faces his first challenge and tries to prove himself worthy to his father buy beating the leopardess that killed his parents, as well as Kipchaks pervious son. He did this not only to prove himself but also to protect his family and the ones he loves.
Much like how in today’s society we have the people that we want to protect whether it be you child, your parents, or any other person you care about that we would go to any means that it takes to keep them safe. This scene also puts him through one of the two most hell like parts of the film by forcing him to protect his father who is losing in the fight, he comes out of the fight victorious after the battle and presents his father with the dead body of Sabor. One of the more lighthearted scenes that gets this message across is when Jane decides to stay on the island with Tarzan because she fell in love with him.
This scene is the most heaven like part of the final and it was right after the most hell like part where when Tarzan agreed to go to London he finds out that it was a trap set by Clayton so he could go capture all of Tarzans family and bring them back for money, and in doing so Tarzans father ends up dying and tells him that he will be the new leader of the family. Because of this Tarzan decides to stay and Jane and her father stay as well. Throughout our lives we actually experience the same feeling that Jane had that made her want to stay.
The feeling that we have such a sense of comfort with someone that we would be willing to leave things behind to be with them. Of course it might not be to an ape man stranded on an island off the coast of Africa, but it’s the same in the sense that you move away from your family and start to become your own person and start your own family. Being that this movie was set in Africa it isn’t related to American wilderness in the location sense but it is related in a way that since the main character is a human, we can somewhat feel how he feels and see how he adapts to this environment that we have never experienced ourselves.
And we can see the way that he takes on the challenges in his life in order to survive in his home. Many of us don’t know what it’s like to be stranded out in the wilderness, or even know how to survive a week out there by ourselves, so the fact that Tarzan was able to conquer this wilderness with the help of his family is truly astonishing. And throughout the film he knows that there is one thing that he can’t ever forget and that’s he is a part of that family and he must do whatever it takes to protect them, because home is where the heart is.
Bibliography:
Tarzan. Dir. Chris Buck and Kevin Lima. Perf. Tony Goldwyn, Minnie Driver, Brian Blessed. Disney, 1999. Film.
