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| Directed by Kenneth Branagh Written by Chris Weitz |
Ever since around the start of the New Tens, the Disney Empire has been back on top of the world. (Not that they ever really left on a financial level, but they've got their pride back now.) The ongoing Marvel Cinematic Universe project prints money hand-over-fist and has become the envy of... every other entity involved in blockbuster film making.. Their animation department has come out of its post-Renaissance 2000s dark age with a vengeance, and is slowly taking the once mighty Pixar's place as America's gold standard for the medium. (At least on film, they're a bit less prevalent on television.)
The big trend of their most recent golden age seems to be taking a sledgehammer to the post-war golden-age before Walt's death and to the money-printing princesses of the Disney Renaissance. From Frozen assaulting the idea of love at first sight while stating that true love need not be romantic, to Maleficent also doing that while being a shockingly dark allegorical rape-revenge film. After seeing that I was intrigued by the idea of a live-action version of Cinderella, which is the archetypal Disney princess movie.
Two Hours Later...
I probably should not be surprised that this turns out to be a rather straight-forward retelling of Cinderella, it's a family movie from Disney, of course it's going to stay in a land far, far away from anything controversial. But if they turned Sleeping Beauty into a story of recovering from sexual assault, then surely Cinderella becomes about domestic abuse and/or dysfunctional families, right? But no, this new version from Kenneth Branagh is more interested in reconstructing the Disney fairy tale after Frozen and Maleficent had a wonderful time tearing it down. Telling the story of Lily James as a young peasant woman that is horribly abused by Cate Blanchett as her stepmother and stepsisters Sophie McShera and Holliday Grainger after her father's untimely death. One day the local king holds a ball and invites all the maidens of the kingdom, only for her overseer to forbid her from going, prompting Helena Bonom Carter as her fairy godmother to dress her up for the ball.
In keeping with the arch, dream like beats of the fairy tales that inspired it, the film looks and feels in tone and texture like a live-action cartoon. From the lavishly designed and decorated sets, to the just exaggerated enough costumes (the dress is actually one of the less impressive outfits on display) and even more exaggerated makeup, to every member of the cast giving professionally embarrassing but compulsively watchable performances. Cinderella is probably the best looking film of 2015 so far. The sets are wonderful, the camerawork is outstanding, the costume design is Oscar caliber, I just wish as much attention to detail went into the script. It isn't bad, far from it. In fact, for exactly what it is Cinderella is a really damn good film. It foregoes the dark revisionism of Maleficent or the pumped-up epic fantasy of the Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland in favor of getting back to basics, and comes off as utterly charming as a result.
Have a nice day.
Greg.B
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