First let's talk about the original Cinderella film before we even get into the new one. In modern day standards many people see the movie as sexist, that it's about a girl who does nothing to get out of her abusive household and sits on her butt waiting for her prince to come. I however view it differently, now I'm girl and I can get where people are coming from when they call Cinderella not very empowering but in terms of sexist I don't think so.
To me, to be an empowering female character you didn't necessarily have to be the ice cold, tough sword swinging Joan of Arc type of character to me you just had to be a good character who is proactive. I still like sword swinging female characters as long as they have substance underneath. For example two of my favorite female characters of are Barbra Gordon Oracle (I do really like Batgirl Barbra Gordon but I prefer Oracle out of the two) and Jo Grant the companion of the Third Doctor . Oracle is a paraplegic who despite not being able to kick-ass physically is able to kick-ass mentally and manages to save the day by using her intelligence and computer skills. Jo Grant on the other hand was clumsy and a bit of an airhead but was one of the kindest companions in Doctor Who history who not only managed to bring out a lot of the good in the doctor and managed to help save the day in some stories.
That's what Cinderella is to me a good female character even if she is not a sword swinging Joan of arc type character. She's works hard to not let her evil incarnate family get to her and just survive while still managing to remain a nice and kind person who still has hope and some happiness in her life. When she wants to go to the fault she works her butt off trying to get opportunity to go and when she gets locked in the door by her step mother preventing her from proving who she is she banging on the door working with the mice to get out. I don't know what that says about me but I relate to her and other female characters who only have intelligence, resourcefulness and kindness more than someone like because I don't have athletic skills or leadership skills or am at all a badass like Wonder Woman or River Song.
Now that my opinion on the original film what's my opinion on the new film. It's meh, which translates to OK in my book. Short version is that is has a lot of problems and should really end up being bad but it has for the most part a very good cast, a beautiful production value and is still enjoyable to watch which keeps it as an OK.
Now for the long version. First the good.
The casting with one or two exceptions are good. The best part as you've been hearing is Cate Blanchett as Lady Tremain, instead of going for outright scary like the original animated one she goes for a more comedic light hearted tone of the character and to me it works in her favor as she is entertaining to watch and when she hits the darker moments it gives it more weight, they also give her a motivation that I really like because while you do understand her more it doesn't take away the fact that this is an evil human being and it's a very realistic. The step-sisters are also a ball to watch and make the actresses involved make the most of their scenes. Richard Madden as the prince also does a good job and they do flesh him out a lot more, he's very charismatic, has great chemistry with Lily James and give him a bit more personality. Everyone else is good and gives it their all in their scene.
I also like the fact they show the process of Cinderella becoming a house servant. It starts as Lady Tremain asking for one chore than two chores than she ask Cinderella to stay in the attic than more chores and than her father dies forcing Cinderella to take up most of the responsibilities for the servants because Lady Tremain fired them all.
The practical production design in this movie is phenomenal especially when it comes to color scheme such as Cinderella's carriage in this is a gold color and her dress is more of a dark blue shade, they contrast each other beautifully and really pop. The ball scene is general with all the dresses makes the scene magical. I also think the themes of Kindness and courage are good messages if poorly handled which I will explain later and the society motivations which they don't just do for Lady Tremain but the king and the duke as well are good motivations if not followed through. The movie is overall fun to watch and you definitely won't be bored or wasting your time if you went to watch it for a good time.
Now for the bad.
When people talk about Cinderella some people consider her a sexist damsel in distress who never does anything which I always counteract with that she has to basically do a thousand chores, she's given more chores and berated for making the simplest mistakes and from what we can see she's pretty much kept in total isolation from the outside world as we never see her go out and her only friends are the mice. Now in this version I think that stereotype sort of applies. Cinderella in this movie not only is the most passive female character I've ever seen to the point of almost being a zombie but also has lame motivation and the fact they try to give her more of a personality makes it worse.
What I mean is that in this movie Cinderella's backstory is fleshed out giving her a motivation of why she puts up with her step-family. When her mother is dying she tells Cinderella or Ella in this case which didn't bother me, to have kindness and courage. They also explore the fact she can speak French, loves to read and rides horses (which are more Belle from Beauty and the Beast traits but whatever.) Yet the movie doesn't seem to get what the definition of kindness and Courage are, especially courage. Here are the proper definitions of kindness and courage are from Webster.
Kindness
NOUN
Nowhere in the movie does Cinderella exhibit any kind of courage. She never does anything that's hard or frightens her. For example leaving the Tremains. In the original a argument can be made she both not only had no money, was completely isolated from the outside world so she had no knowledge to live outside her family especially since she was a little girl when her parents died. In the film is shows her going outside to market, her having servant friends she can rely on and as I mentioned with the expansion of her character she really has the capabilities to become a teacher or a servant for a nicer family but she never does anything to change her situation. Her parents died when she's a teenager so she doesn't have the excuse of being a little girl and being under the dominance of lady Tremain for years where as here at most it's about a year. On character in the movie even ask her why don't you leave, at first you think with Lady Tremain and other characters she would have a society motivation of her having no where to go or having no money but instead she says states the promise she made to her mother of being kind and having courage.
That's not courage that's endurance and the more courageous thing for her to do would be to try and stand up to lady Tremain which she doesn't really do. Not to mention I don't think her parents would want this type of life for her, it's such a weak motivation and while you can say Cinderella in the original movie didn't have much of motivation but at least they didn't give anyone else a motivation and you could still sympathize with her a lot where as here she comes off as a non-entity or stupid. She's doesn't exhibit anything explicitly kind she's more polite than kind, the closets things I can say she does are the fact she feeds the mice who don't talk back to her and she doesn't really have a relationship towards. I mentioned earlier that most of the cast did well with one or two exceptions, the exception being Lily James as Cinderella.
To me she's really miscast as Cinderella, she definitely looks like her but she has no charisma and energy nor the acting ability to carry a movie. That's not saying she can't act in fact at first I thought she would be really good as she did have a lot of subtitle character expressions but as the movie goes on there's nothing really of substance in her performance and she's rather wooden. The only times she really came alive were when she was with Richard Madden but all her scenes with him are really far between each other so she's left out to dry. I've never seen her on Down Town Abbey (never watched the show) so I can't definitely say she's a bad actress and more so I blame the writers for how Cinderella is portrayed as she is probably the weakest character in the movie and it felt as if they were so busy developing everyone else they forgot about her as everyone even the Duke is given more character development than her.
Another thing that really annoyed me was the infamous dress ripping scene. If you read my analysis of the scene you know I think it's probably one of the most important scenes in the movie as it's basically a symbol of Cinderella's kindness and hard work being torn apart by the step sisters who only want to see her suffer and they end up getting that. In the original it was basically the equivalent of a Disney beating or rape scene here the step mother just tears the sleeves off and a ribbon which she could have fixed if this Cinderella was smart. It wasn't like she was seeing the Prince in this she's supposedly seeing an apprentice. This contributes to the lack of development Cinderella gets and how the writers screwed the character over.
Now one of the few changes that people were talking about before this movie came out was that the Prince and Cinderella were going to get more time to develop their romance in the movie... they get one meeting before the ball. Just one, they don't have a collection or montage of different meetings they meet once, share some banter and boom their in love. This really sadden me because Lily James and Richard Madden legitimately do have good chemistry together and it's one of the better points of the movie but because they don't have another meeting other than talking in the forest for five minutes you don't really buy that they are in love, you buy physical attraction for sure but nothing in terms of actual substance or character. If your going to expand the story and rewrite some things why don't you have it where Cinderella and the Prince (who lies when he first meets her telling her he's an apprentice named Kit) keep meeting each other and have them form an actual relationship. It would be more believable if they met more than three times and you can get behind them better as a couple, especially since it kind of starts as a lie when the Prince lies about his identity and when Cinderella finds out who he is it barley even fazes her when at the very least she should have locked a little shocked. A few characters even reference them only meeting one other time and question how they could be in love and neither give a clear answer. In the movie theater when they met for the first time I thought it was a good start and when I was starting to figure out they wouldn't meet again until the ball it was infuriating because it's wasting much needed development and chemistry.
In fact for a lot of the movie you can say a lot of things go underdeveloped such as the Prince and Cinderella's romance, The King dying which is so rushed through it feels like as if he died from an illness that should have taken a month ended up taking four days and theirs a subplot with the Duke promising the Prince to a Princess but that barely is even an afterthought, if they had more time or a more slower paced this movie would have been better. Also while I mentioned the practical side of the movie was beautiful the CG was pretty bad in the sense you could tell you were looking at CG instead of something tangibly real, much of it looked really fake and poorly done.
I think they also missed out on some more potential with the fairy god mother in the sense that her helping Cinderella comes out of no where. That's not to say it's any better in the original in fact it's a really annoying plot hole of mine in the original but here they had more time. Helen Bohem Carter is completely wasted as the fairy god mother who gets only one scene really, why didn't they make it where throughout her life the fairy godmother approached Cinderella for some kindness and to see whether she was worthy of help, it would have given the fairy godmother more to do and would have helped show Cinderella is actually the kindest person in the world like the movie says she is but never shows she is.
Now it sounds as if I'm comparing this movie a lot to the original and before you say I don't like this movie just because I liked the original, I did find this movie very entertaining and I don't regret seeing it. Yet I can't ignore the fact this movie is a bad movie and just because you criticize something doesn't mean you can't like it or just because you like something doesn't mean it's not bad. For example I really liked Divergent but I picked apart everyone of the movies plot holes in it's entirety. Not to mention when comparing this movie to the original they change so little you can't help not comparing it.
I give this movie a 5/10~ Most of the performances are really good, practically speaking the production is very pretty and it is an entertaining movie but so many things are rushed, underdeveloped or not really changed that much that keeps this movie from being anything really good or great.
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She promised her father to remember her mother and the house is so much of her mother, and to protect the house. I don't remember the movie verbatim, but isn’t the house part of the answer she gave the servant girl when asked why doesn't she leave? The house was with her family for hundreds of years and where she was happiest.
ReplyDeleteElla offers her bedroom to her stepsisters. She obeys her stepmother without complaint. It is easy to be kind to kindness or strangers. It is hard to be kind to cruelty. Ella saves the buck from being hunted, another kindness... She is kind to her father: he leaves for travel she doesn't ask for material things, she only asks for the first branch he comes across - and to carry it with him. I don't think there is anything wrong asking for gifts from your dad, but it is sweet that really she is telling him she wants him to carry a reminder of her so that way he knows he is loved wherever he goes, and that it won't cost him a thing. Ella was kind to the servants, even helped with chores, before they were fired.
The King being ill and dying shortly afterwards: that happens in real life. Not all illnesses last months - sometimes you have months or a year or more, sometimes you only have a week or days. To me that is not unrealistic.
Do you sew? The sleeves that were torn might not be able to be taken in further without a large hemline. Also, you might be too literal... she is overcome by the cruelty of her stepmother. Even if the dress is an easy fix, she is still emotionally raped, just as in the first cartoon movie. Also the stepmother ordered that she not go to the ball. If Cinderella didn't obey her, who knows what hell she'd have to pay later.
I don’t think Ella is dumb (or Lily James is a bad actor). When she found out the prince's true identity the pieces were falling into place. It wasn’t surprising; it made sense.
I love Helena Bonham Carter as the fairy godmother too, however, she didn't need to ask Cinderella for help even once to prove Cinderella's kindness, she already knew it. We don't have to see repeated times of Cinderella helping her... to keep the movie going, once was enough to make the point. The audience knows that Cinderella would have done it 100 (or more) times if the opportunity presented itself. For any Cinderella fan it is a given.
It takes courage to go to a royal ball, alone, be presented, and dance in front of people, even if it is only with an apprentice. It takes courage to stand up to her stepmother, which she did do when she asked the stepmother why she is so cruel. Ella faced a horrible situation every day - it is easy to quit. Ella stands up for her convictions when she defends the buck from being hunted. It takes courage to stay positive in positively dismal circumstances - I found it inspiring how she was happy with the attic saying she had a lot of room and that no one would bother her there. There are things that are frightening other than only sword fights. Being alone is frightening. Rejection is frightening. She encourages the prince to have courage to tell his father he’ll marry for love. In the face of cruelty it is easy to turn to violence. Jesus, Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. promote loving your enemy. They are real life heroes. The character of Cinderella was kind to her enemies.
You're right that it’d be nicer to see more scenes between the prince and Cinderella, however many modern movies/romances/romantic comedies have their characters fall in love on a short time frame. The movie's pace was just right, I don't remember any of it dragging and even felt like some of it was exciting... and her time with the prince was very romantic.
It is as if you watched the movie to see what was wrong with it the whole time. I got caught up in all the beauty. I thought the scenes were breathtakingly stunning with the fashion and the landscapes. I loved it and I loved Lily James in it. I felt the Disney magic.