04 June 2014
ALL THE POWERS OF HELL
The worst flaw, by far, of Disney's new adventure in branding, Maleficent, is that it's operating in completely bad faith. This isn't a retelling of the same company's 1959 animated masterpiece Sleeping Beauty, told from the perspective of the villain; it's not a backstory that explains how the villain used to be good before turning evil, in the Wicked mode; it's not a retelling of the story designed to show how the villain actually isn't that villainous, although this is what it thinks it is. It is, in fact, a completely different story altogether that shares a few character names and design elements, as well as one specific scene with Sleeping Beauty, but cannot be squared with the events of that film even at the level of he-said-she-said narrative subjectivity. Ideally, we wouldn't feel compelled to compare the two at all, but Disney is hellbent on making certain we do, and this is absolutely deadly for the new film, which tells a less interesting story centered on a much less interesting figure: the idea of Angelina Jolie playing Maleficent is a lot more exciting when it's the raging, purely evil Maleficent who delights in being cruel for the sake of it and transforms into a dragon and sneers with contemptuous menace at the human maggots she knows to be beneath her.
It's a pity that the film starts off with such an insurmountable handicap, because if it weren't explicitly tied to one of the finest villains in cinema history, transforming her into a sympathetic, tragic figure - though one whose given name unyieldingly connotes to any speaker of English or any Romantic language the idea of wickedness and violence - Maleficent would be a lot easier to like as a pretty decent, though unmistakably flawed fantasy. If we allow that it's part of a loosely defined brand that includes Alice in Wonderland from 2010, Snow White and the Huntsman from 2012, and Oz the Great and Powerful from 2013 - all sharp-edged riffs on classic children's stories produced by Joe Roth, three of them involving former visual effects artist Robert Stromberg in some capacity - Maleficent is cozily the best of them, though if the bar gets much lower than "this was better than Alice in Wonderland", one begins to question whether or not one actually "clears" it, or simply trips over it.
It is, at any rate, Stromberg's first film as a director, and if he designed production like a VFX artist before, he directs like a production designer now, clearly more interested in the locations and objects that parade in front of the camera than the humans who interact with those locations. The actual production design is left to Dylan Cole and Gary Freeman, and I think that, in part, makes all of the difference: their style isn't so garish as Stromberg's was on Alice and Oz, even if the overall feeling of Maleficent's fantasy sequences shares their "let's bring a '70s prog-rock album cover to life!" mentality. Better still, Maleficent boasts a protagonist played by an actor with extremely clear designs on her character, who needs no guidance from a filmmaker obviously more interested in tinkering with video game characters than telling a story or having people doing interesting things (the aggressively poor performances by any and all non-Jolie actors in the cast speaks to this fluently, if depressingly).
Despite largely eschewing Sleeping Beauty, Linda Woolverton's screenplay for the new film copies, more or less, that movie's ellipsis-driven structure, which I find myself regarding as a good choice; it lends Maleficent the feeling of a a classic European fairy tale, with details sketched in and explained as asides, and this gives it quite a bit of added weight when it starts to tweak and up-end the tone of those fairy tales. So it is that we have a quickly blitzed-through prologue explaining how there's a human kingdom next to a fairy realm on the moors, and one day a human boy, Stefan (Michael Higgins as a child, Jackson Bews as a teen, and Sharlto Copley as an adult, which is most of the time), crosses the line into the moors and is caught by the fairies; he's saved through the intercession of the human-sized horned fairy Maleficent (Isobelle Molloy and Ella Purnell precede Jolie in the role), and they fall in love. But then, one day, Stefan drugs and mutilates Maleficent, cutting off her wings to use as token that he should be named heir to the kingdom. Enraged, the fairy took her revenge on the human upon the birth of his daughter, laying out the whole spinning wheel curse of legend.
After this, the story overlaps with Disney's original, though it doesn't coincide with it: Stefan sends the baby to live with three incompetent fairies disguised as human women, Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Flittle (Lesley Manville), and Thistletwit (June Temple). Since they're incapable of keeping the child from starving to death, Maleficent herself, aided by a crow-turned-human, Diaval (Sam Riley), intercedes to raise the baby to her teenage years, so that the curse may be carried out; but when teenage Aurora (Elle Fanning), gifted by the other fairies with eternal happiness, finds great joy and delight in spending time with the grim-faced Maleficent, it begins to thaw the "wicked" fairy's heart. At which point the film stops resembling Disney's at all, although Stromberg and cinematographer Dean Semler do their best to stage scenes in ways that echo and mimic individual shots from the '59 film.
Woolverton's script is heavy on abstraction and low on real cohesion - the shift by which Maleficent transforms from irritated child-hater to affectionate secret caregiver is missing entirely, and it's the one thing that Jolie is powerless to do anything about - and the themes are foggier than they'd like to be (it's feminist-ish without actually being feminist; but then again, the fact that a family-friendly Disney movie is metaphorically about not letting men get away with date rape counts as some The Second Sex-level radicalism by corporate standards). But the overall tone is about right, giving us the mythic strokes of a story and letting us imagine our way into the rest. It's a brisk narrative that has the exact feeling of a bedtime story, not an epic adventure, and it's easy to see why plenty of people have been turned off by that, but given the material and the target audience, it leaves the film with a pleasantly distinct personality that stands out nicely against the generally overly-literal popcorn movies that come out these days.
The crisp, folkloric storytelling is better than the film built around that story, perhaps: it's a handsome but blank looking film with some faintly awful CGI in its depiction of the fairy world and the creatures living there, frequently feeling more like a cartoon than something that's meant to be photorealistic. Stromberg is the absolute dictionary definition of a hack filmmaker: he's there to keep things moving in a forward direction, but doesn't put an ounce in insight or personality into any image or narrative beat, leaving people like Semler and composer James Newton Howard to do all the heavy lifting. The only scene that really sparks as cinema, and not as a chance to watch Angelina Jolie do her thing, is the christening scene, the one beat-for-beat remake of a moment from Sleeping Beauty; it's also the one moment that real fairy tale scariness creeps into the film or Jolie's performance, and the whole thing is dramatic and exciting and over much too quickly.
Still, watching Jolie do her thing turns out to be a more than passable diversion: she's great in the role, greater than she's been in ten years (by which I mean her outstanding snarling female monster in Alexander, a judgment that I not expect to be widely shared). She wails with betrayed anguish when she realises her wings are gone, and it is unnerving and soul-shattering; she laughs with private glee when laying the curse down on baby Aurora, and it is a moment of captivating, charismatic villainy; she holds the toddler Aurora with a kind of well-meaning stiffness as a confused mix of annoyance and affection battle on her face, and it is sweet and tender. Just the variety of ways she says the word "beastie" - her name for Aurora - is enough to make this a fantastic performance and a worthwhile experience.
Without Jolie, Maleficent is a fine, boring movie: faintly anonymous fantasy landscapes with just enough color that they're not completely generic, a story that is mostly interesting for subverting expectations than because of the intellectual rigor with which it so subverts, and some pretty fantastic costume design, courtesy of Anna B. Sheppard. But Jolie is good enough in specific way to make it, an honestly successful summer movie: long on iconic, broad-strokes dramatic moments and emotions, boldly presentational in its approach, and suitably mythic and surface-level. Coupled with its decidedly unfussy approach to fantasy, the film works in an unexpectedly old-school way; it's primitive and direct, simple in its grandeur, with just enough contemporary themes on the edges to avoid feeling musty. It's basic but highly effective children's fantasy, never great but consistently engaging, and just magical and mysterious enough to feel more like a real fairy tale than a dodgy postmodern retelling of one.
6/10
It's a pity that the film starts off with such an insurmountable handicap, because if it weren't explicitly tied to one of the finest villains in cinema history, transforming her into a sympathetic, tragic figure - though one whose given name unyieldingly connotes to any speaker of English or any Romantic language the idea of wickedness and violence - Maleficent would be a lot easier to like as a pretty decent, though unmistakably flawed fantasy. If we allow that it's part of a loosely defined brand that includes Alice in Wonderland from 2010, Snow White and the Huntsman from 2012, and Oz the Great and Powerful from 2013 - all sharp-edged riffs on classic children's stories produced by Joe Roth, three of them involving former visual effects artist Robert Stromberg in some capacity - Maleficent is cozily the best of them, though if the bar gets much lower than "this was better than Alice in Wonderland", one begins to question whether or not one actually "clears" it, or simply trips over it.
It is, at any rate, Stromberg's first film as a director, and if he designed production like a VFX artist before, he directs like a production designer now, clearly more interested in the locations and objects that parade in front of the camera than the humans who interact with those locations. The actual production design is left to Dylan Cole and Gary Freeman, and I think that, in part, makes all of the difference: their style isn't so garish as Stromberg's was on Alice and Oz, even if the overall feeling of Maleficent's fantasy sequences shares their "let's bring a '70s prog-rock album cover to life!" mentality. Better still, Maleficent boasts a protagonist played by an actor with extremely clear designs on her character, who needs no guidance from a filmmaker obviously more interested in tinkering with video game characters than telling a story or having people doing interesting things (the aggressively poor performances by any and all non-Jolie actors in the cast speaks to this fluently, if depressingly).
Despite largely eschewing Sleeping Beauty, Linda Woolverton's screenplay for the new film copies, more or less, that movie's ellipsis-driven structure, which I find myself regarding as a good choice; it lends Maleficent the feeling of a a classic European fairy tale, with details sketched in and explained as asides, and this gives it quite a bit of added weight when it starts to tweak and up-end the tone of those fairy tales. So it is that we have a quickly blitzed-through prologue explaining how there's a human kingdom next to a fairy realm on the moors, and one day a human boy, Stefan (Michael Higgins as a child, Jackson Bews as a teen, and Sharlto Copley as an adult, which is most of the time), crosses the line into the moors and is caught by the fairies; he's saved through the intercession of the human-sized horned fairy Maleficent (Isobelle Molloy and Ella Purnell precede Jolie in the role), and they fall in love. But then, one day, Stefan drugs and mutilates Maleficent, cutting off her wings to use as token that he should be named heir to the kingdom. Enraged, the fairy took her revenge on the human upon the birth of his daughter, laying out the whole spinning wheel curse of legend.
After this, the story overlaps with Disney's original, though it doesn't coincide with it: Stefan sends the baby to live with three incompetent fairies disguised as human women, Knotgrass (Imelda Staunton), Flittle (Lesley Manville), and Thistletwit (June Temple). Since they're incapable of keeping the child from starving to death, Maleficent herself, aided by a crow-turned-human, Diaval (Sam Riley), intercedes to raise the baby to her teenage years, so that the curse may be carried out; but when teenage Aurora (Elle Fanning), gifted by the other fairies with eternal happiness, finds great joy and delight in spending time with the grim-faced Maleficent, it begins to thaw the "wicked" fairy's heart. At which point the film stops resembling Disney's at all, although Stromberg and cinematographer Dean Semler do their best to stage scenes in ways that echo and mimic individual shots from the '59 film.
Woolverton's script is heavy on abstraction and low on real cohesion - the shift by which Maleficent transforms from irritated child-hater to affectionate secret caregiver is missing entirely, and it's the one thing that Jolie is powerless to do anything about - and the themes are foggier than they'd like to be (it's feminist-ish without actually being feminist; but then again, the fact that a family-friendly Disney movie is metaphorically about not letting men get away with date rape counts as some The Second Sex-level radicalism by corporate standards). But the overall tone is about right, giving us the mythic strokes of a story and letting us imagine our way into the rest. It's a brisk narrative that has the exact feeling of a bedtime story, not an epic adventure, and it's easy to see why plenty of people have been turned off by that, but given the material and the target audience, it leaves the film with a pleasantly distinct personality that stands out nicely against the generally overly-literal popcorn movies that come out these days.
The crisp, folkloric storytelling is better than the film built around that story, perhaps: it's a handsome but blank looking film with some faintly awful CGI in its depiction of the fairy world and the creatures living there, frequently feeling more like a cartoon than something that's meant to be photorealistic. Stromberg is the absolute dictionary definition of a hack filmmaker: he's there to keep things moving in a forward direction, but doesn't put an ounce in insight or personality into any image or narrative beat, leaving people like Semler and composer James Newton Howard to do all the heavy lifting. The only scene that really sparks as cinema, and not as a chance to watch Angelina Jolie do her thing, is the christening scene, the one beat-for-beat remake of a moment from Sleeping Beauty; it's also the one moment that real fairy tale scariness creeps into the film or Jolie's performance, and the whole thing is dramatic and exciting and over much too quickly.
Still, watching Jolie do her thing turns out to be a more than passable diversion: she's great in the role, greater than she's been in ten years (by which I mean her outstanding snarling female monster in Alexander, a judgment that I not expect to be widely shared). She wails with betrayed anguish when she realises her wings are gone, and it is unnerving and soul-shattering; she laughs with private glee when laying the curse down on baby Aurora, and it is a moment of captivating, charismatic villainy; she holds the toddler Aurora with a kind of well-meaning stiffness as a confused mix of annoyance and affection battle on her face, and it is sweet and tender. Just the variety of ways she says the word "beastie" - her name for Aurora - is enough to make this a fantastic performance and a worthwhile experience.
Without Jolie, Maleficent is a fine, boring movie: faintly anonymous fantasy landscapes with just enough color that they're not completely generic, a story that is mostly interesting for subverting expectations than because of the intellectual rigor with which it so subverts, and some pretty fantastic costume design, courtesy of Anna B. Sheppard. But Jolie is good enough in specific way to make it, an honestly successful summer movie: long on iconic, broad-strokes dramatic moments and emotions, boldly presentational in its approach, and suitably mythic and surface-level. Coupled with its decidedly unfussy approach to fantasy, the film works in an unexpectedly old-school way; it's primitive and direct, simple in its grandeur, with just enough contemporary themes on the edges to avoid feeling musty. It's basic but highly effective children's fantasy, never great but consistently engaging, and just magical and mysterious enough to feel more like a real fairy tale than a dodgy postmodern retelling of one.
6/10
14 comments:
Just a few rules so that everybody can have fun: ad hominem attacks on the blogger are fair; ad hominem attacks on other commenters will be deleted. And I will absolutely not stand for anything that is, in my judgment, demeaning, insulting or hateful to any gender, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion. And though I won't insist on keeping politics out, let's think long and hard before we say anything particularly inflammatory.
Also, sorry about the whole "must be a registered user" thing, but I do deeply hate to get spam, and I refuse to take on the totalitarian mantle of moderating comments, and I am much too lazy to try to migrate over to a better comments system than the one that comes pre-loaded with Blogger.
Tim, this is of course only tangentially relevant to this review, but I'd love if you elaborated on Alexander. Rationally, I can see why it has earned its fame as a bad movie, but my gut reaction to it (Farrell's miscasting aside) is overall positive - like its failures come from trying too much rather than playing it safe, and I appreciate that. And yeah, Jolie thrived in playing such a larger than lide character, the impossible age gap between her and her fictional son be damned.
ReplyDeleteWell, it does have a 10th anniversary coming up. And it is endlessly fascinating, for good or for bad...
ReplyDeleteI have said it before and will say it again: If this doesn't lead to a film called URSULA, starring Kathy Bates, I will be sorely disappointed.
ReplyDeleteI'm finding the reaction to this film (which I have not yet seen) absolutely fascinating. It is getting mixed reviews, trending towards bad from the majority of critics, but it got an "A" cinemascore from audiences, and everyone I personally know that has seen it has absolutely fucking loved the movie. It's an interesting contrast, at the very least.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately for you, most people love the film and what it has to offer. So I 100% disagree with what you wrote.
ReplyDeleteSpoilers will follow:
ReplyDeleteStefan's betrayal is the single best part of the film. Its combination of the symbolic/mythic wing cutting and the literal/realist drugged drink, Jolie's performance and the sheer surprise of seeing a metaphorical rape scene in a Disney summer blockbuster makes for a powerful and disturbing scene. I wouldn't be surprised if it becomes the best-remembered part of the film, along with Jolie's magnificence.
However, the end doesn't work anywhere near as well because of the problem of having two climaxes; the true love's kiss and Maleficent regaining her wings. The filmmakers apparently decided to make the former the secondary climax as they underplay it and set it before the big battle, which is understandable if they wanted the film to be primarily about Maleficent herself rather than her relationship with Aurora.
However, the kiss is the more dramatically strong moment, as it is not only the traditional high point of the story but also the film's most self-consciously subversive moment, while the return of the wings comes across as a power-up for the boss fight. They should have either come up with something better or gone with the kiss instead. Besides, wouldn't it have been fun to see Maleficent storming the castle to reach the Sleeping Beauty?
"though one whose given name unyieldingly connotes to any speaker of English or any Romantic language the idea of wickedness and violence"
Maleficent's unsubtle but awesome Finnish name translates to English as Evil+[feminine suffix with connotations of power], which made the scenes of her as a cute twelve-year-old hilarious.
The first thirty minutes are pretty great, but once it becomes an adaptation of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas it rapidly slides into really weak predictability with zero dramatic tension. I've compared it to Return of the Jedi, except if Stromberg and Woolverton had done Jedi, we would have all been perfectly aware for the final hour that Darth Vader truly did love his son and had the strength to defend him.
ReplyDeletePLUS she doesn't turn into a dragon, which is utterly lame, and (spoiler) the reinforcement of traditional feminine values via Disney death is, in this context, pretty abhorrent. What is Maleficent, Disney's most iconic villain, ultimately good at? Taking care of children and forgiving people! Just awful.
At least Snow White and the Huntsman went for the gusto. The dreary, blue-and-gray gusto, but gusto nevertheless.
I didn't realize it was Finnish, but yeah "Male-" is pretty unmistakable anywhere in a European cultural context.
ReplyDeleteHearing that this was basically a completely different story actually made me feel quite a bit better. I really don't want to live in a world where Maleficent has a motivation besides besides not being invited to a baby shower.
ReplyDeleteAh, no, her name was translated as "Pahatar" back in '59. We don't have that many Latin loanwords so "Maleficent" wouldn't be a very evocative name to a Finn.
ReplyDeleteShe doesn't turn into a dragon?
ReplyDeleteI'm deeply disappointed.
However, it's reassuring to know that they didn't go with the "gritty post-modern fairytale" approach and made a straight-on fairy tale instead. Now, if only it would have been animated, in 2D...
Scratch that. Seeing an animated Maleficent going all gooey over baby Aurora is a sight I never, ever want to see. And now I'm imagining it, great.
ReplyDeleteWow, loved the review. It really nails it. You never really diss the movie (so I don't know why the angry posts about the review being negative), but show it as what it is, with all its good accomplishments. I just don't agree about Oz, I do happen to like that movie better than this one and many others, as flawed as it surely is.
ReplyDeleteI finally watched this movie today, and while it wasn't that bad (Jolie made it watchable practically by herself), I felt sort of sad. So much wasted potential here for a powerful story about the meaning of evil and/or femininity. Sleeping Beauty is practically dripping with gender issues, and this film could have been a nice decon/retcon of the original. As I said, wasn't terrible, but could have been so much better.
ReplyDelete