YMMV / Son of the White Horse

• Animation Age Ghetto: The creators targeted the film to viewers in their teens and twenties, evidenced by the surprising amount of suggestive content and outright nudity. One contemporary critic even noted the princesses' charms were strictly for ages 16 and up. Regardless, the movie was frequently shown to kids and received nonrestrictive age ratings by TV networks because it's animated and based on stories every child knows.
• Audience-Alienating Premise: The biggest point of contention about the film is whether its crazy psychedelic visuals and often hard to interpret symbolism are enough to overlook the simple and repetitive plot that does away with traditional narrative and structural elements like Character Development. Given its source material, the story is literally kindergarten-level basic. Some argue that the age-old tropes, the grandiose execution and references to ancient creation myths make the film universal and almost cosmic in scope. Others think it's an example of "style over substance". General audiences at the time of release weren't impressed, as the experimental presentation was just too unusual and the symbolism too impenetrable. The movie garnered much more acclaim on the fringes of the mainstream.
• Award Snub: The Hungarian film award committee showed no regard for animation up until 1982, when one critic reportedly made a speech in favor of recognizing their artistic merit, citing this movie and Vuk the Little Fox as examples. In response, the committee miraculously changed their mind and indeed gave the Film of the Year award... to the already successful Vuk, while continuing to ignore Fehérlófia. It wasn't until 1984 that the San Francisco "Animation Olympiad" gave it some acclaim by naming it the 49th best cartoon of all time. Ironically, the essay on which the director had based the film was an award winner that catapulted him to fame among the literature academics.
• Awesome Art: The whole film was a massive experimental artistic undertaking, as the director wanted to establish unity between the background art and character animation.
• Broken Base: Discussed by the director, who noticed that the film was way more popular in the eastern half of Hungary than in the west. He suggested that part of the country was not just geographically but also culturally closer to their Asiatic roots and responded better to the film's mythological aspects. Eastern regions also promoted the film better. Nowadays, the movie is still divisive in its home — generally, people more interested in the field of animation and its artistic potential mostly like it, whereas people more used to mainstream animated works and the studio's less experimental cartoons hate it. Its interpretation of ancient myths and symbols is also a controversial subject.
• Genius Bonus: The opening lines dedicate the film to ancient Huns, Avarians, Scythians and other steppe peoples, so you can bet that it's filled to the brim with all sorts of nods to their culture, beliefs, art and history, inspired by a massive folklore essay that had won the director an award while he was preparing to make the movie. For that matter, the film's use of old folklore tropes and cryptic symbolism in its dialogue, imagery and even shot compositions are just as (if not more) vital parts of its presentation as the narrative itself.
  • Take for example the brief appearances of the planet Saturn hidden in the shape of explosions, reflections and the dragons' eyes and contrast them with Eurasian mythological interpretations of the ancient god of the same name. Saturn represents the God of Death and the divide between light/life and darkness/death. It's also a nod to how Saturn is the farthest planet visible to the naked eye.
  • The designs of the three brothers' facial features reference Yin and Yang (Stonecrumbler), the geometric stability of triangles (Irontemperer) and the perfection of circles (Treeshaker).
  • The strange moment when the Griffin grows a second head alludes to the double-headed eagle of the Orthodox Church's emblem. The creature literally looks both forward and back as it tries to escape the Underworld, signalling its resurrection. In many myths, griffins were given the power to cross the boundaries between different worlds, which is its main role in the film as well.
  • The White Mare's design is perhaps the most layered, as she's a transitional character. Her colors and flowing mane recall winter blizzards and she leaves snowflakes behind that melt into sweat as she goes into labor. Her reindeer-like antlers form a regal crown made up of snowdrop flower petals that bloom at the end of winter and serve as symbols for spring in European cultures. Fittingly, she sheds her antlers as her life (winter) wanes and her son (a Sun God representing summer) grows stronger. Her gradual transformation from a deer to a horse also recalls how the nomadic ancestors of steppe peoples slowly shifted from herding deer to herding horses as they had traveled to warmer climates thousands of years ago. The antlers even hint at old nomadic traditions of putting horned burial masks on sacred horses, strengthening the historical importance of the two animals. The Mare's foal morphing into a human child and completing the "evolution" from deer to horse and human illustrates the shared cultural myth of the White Mare's Son. Finally, the Mare's devotion to her young and self-sacrifice are also based in reality: some European and Asian cultures' mothers used to breastfeed their children up until their prepubescent years, and elderly people would indeed sacrifice their lives for the benefit of the next generation by moving into abandoned caves to perish there.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: The film's reception in its home country has been mixed at best. It flopped in theaters, critical reactions were divided with one famous folk art expert openly deriding the movie. Hungarian viewers still see it as either an artistic film curiosity or as a horrid piece of unwatchable psychedelia, either one of the best or worst films of their country, but most simply haven't heard of it. It lingered in obscurity for almost 40 years with only terrible-quality VHS and DVD releases to its name, but in the meantime it built up a reputation as a sought-after "hidden gem" among international animation lovers. Nowadays, it tends to be cited in English literature, websites and articles as one of Hungary's most important and famous animated works, a reaction most Hungarians would probably scoff at. Around the late-2010s and early-2020s, this global attention culminated in an American co-produced restoration, limited theatrical showings and even a Blu-ray release. As an example of real-life irony, Marcell Jankovics had the exact opposite intent when making the film: targeting solely his home audience with not a thought given about international appeal.
• Ho Yay: The Goblin forcibly spreading Stonecrumbler's legs apart and eating from the porridge pot on his belly, then his two brothers spanking him as punishment, with one even sitting on his face. Later Irontemperer gets to be the spanking subject.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Most people watch and recommend the movie for the animation alone, either to be mesmerized by the art design or to trip out. The meaning of the visuals are nearly always overlooked, with some reviews even claiming there is none, despite the director's intent to frame the film entirely around themes and symbolism.
• Narm: To anyone familiar with the Hungarian language, the fact that the characters, including the menacing dragons, speak an old-timey folk dialect with lots of outdated expressions and occasionally adopt vaguely farmboy-ish accents may come off either as authentic or plain comical.
• Nightmare Fuel: The second half of the white mare's story, from about when everything starts going down in ruins. Also, the dragons.
• Squick: Fanyűvő still suckling the barely alive White Mare as an adult.
• Tear Jerker: The mare's death.
• Vindicated by History: Partially overlaps with Germans Love David Hasselhoff and Acclaimed Flop. The movie tanked in its country of origin, and though it wasn't universally hated and some critics spoke highly of it, the studio was severely disappointed both with the film and the director. It was vastly overshadowed by later works like Cat City and Vuk the Little Fox, two very popular animated movies that are still in the mainstream's attention today. Outside of Hungary, Fehérlófia garnered much more critical praise and analysis, while the aforementioned two films remained obscure in the West. Likely due to this notability, it finally received a 4K digital restoration in early 2019. Jankovics himself has said it took the world 40 years of "catching up" to appreciate his work.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?/What Do You Mean, It's Not for Kids?: An animated film about classic folk tales told to children in Hungary, full of abstract, unnervingly surreal imagery, nudity and blatant phallic/vagina imagery. Who's it meant for? According to the director, he mainly targeted teens and adults, but kids he spoke to loved it as well, and he believed that children shouldn't be sheltered from such works. For what it's worth, television showings have given the film G and 6+ ratings, while the original DVD release was for ages 12 and up.

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