"Picture Me Giving a Damn..."
Aug. 18th, 2012 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
blahflowersGood things then.
Just back from Brave, the latest Pixar film in which for the first time they have a female lead for a film, in which Princess Merida clashes with her mother over which of a rather raggedy collection of first sons of the local clan leaders she must be betrothed to. I'm largely ignorant of most media these days so I don't know whether there has been much mention of the film or whether it disappeared into the black hole of 'not being anything to do with the Olympics' and has been ignored. I desperately hope it doesn't fall victim to the Halle-Berry-as-Catwoman fallacy (a particular film with a female lead is terrible and doesn't make money so the white, male, studio executives decide this means no-one wants to watch films with women in the main characters. It's too good for that. Kelly McDonald is great as Merida and the rest of the Hollywood Scottish cast (plus Emma Thompson and the increasingly-typecast-as-old-ladies Julie Walters) back her up wonderfully, with Billy Connelly laying in enough ham for a long winter as King Fergus. The digital sets are amazing, they seem to have designed their Dark Ages Scotland on Middle Earth and Narnia, there are mountains that look as though they should have dwarf-mines below, a rather Fangorn-ish forest and they seem to have taken over Cair Paravel's cliff for a castle location. They are so detailed now that they are often completely indistinguishable from real life.
Any parents who found they got something in their eye during Toy Story 3 might find the same problem here, while there's plenty for kids to enjoy with men fighting and baby bears running amok there is also the story of the relationship between Merida and Elinor, her mother. Elinor wants Merida to put aside some of her more unladylike habits, Merida wants her freedom. Although our sympathies are clearly supposed to be with the girl, Elinor isn't written as a cold, heartless brute, she wants her daughter to make the best of a bad situation. Her journey is one of gaining a wider perspective and coming to see the woman her daughter will one day need. Merida comes perilously close to stereotypical tomboy territory at times but just avoids it, although there is the obligatory 'this corset is too tight'/busting scene she keeps her dress on for the full picture and beats the boys at their own game. That said, everyone outside of the immediate royal family is pretty much from stock types in this sort of situation, think of the villagers from Asterix in one of their periodic dust-ups and you'll guess where things are going. The characters of the three sons and three potential suitors for Merida's hand are odd, they look like three bigger roles that got left mostly on the soundstage floor. When they agree with Merida that perhaps they, rather than their parents, should be the ones to choose their destiny they haven't had the sort of roles in the film to justify the claim. But otherwise the script is as sharp as you would expect from Pixar. The film drags a little in it's second quarter as the plot bed for the rest of the film is laid in but the other three quarters are sharp and the action scenes impressive.
Sadly I don't think this film manages to pass the Bechdel test unless you count discussions between a human and a bear.
Just back from Brave, the latest Pixar film in which for the first time they have a female lead for a film, in which Princess Merida clashes with her mother over which of a rather raggedy collection of first sons of the local clan leaders she must be betrothed to. I'm largely ignorant of most media these days so I don't know whether there has been much mention of the film or whether it disappeared into the black hole of 'not being anything to do with the Olympics' and has been ignored. I desperately hope it doesn't fall victim to the Halle-Berry-as-Catwoman fallacy (a particular film with a female lead is terrible and doesn't make money so the white, male, studio executives decide this means no-one wants to watch films with women in the main characters. It's too good for that. Kelly McDonald is great as Merida and the rest of the Hollywood Scottish cast (plus Emma Thompson and the increasingly-typecast-as-old-ladies Julie Walters) back her up wonderfully, with Billy Connelly laying in enough ham for a long winter as King Fergus. The digital sets are amazing, they seem to have designed their Dark Ages Scotland on Middle Earth and Narnia, there are mountains that look as though they should have dwarf-mines below, a rather Fangorn-ish forest and they seem to have taken over Cair Paravel's cliff for a castle location. They are so detailed now that they are often completely indistinguishable from real life.
Any parents who found they got something in their eye during Toy Story 3 might find the same problem here, while there's plenty for kids to enjoy with men fighting and baby bears running amok there is also the story of the relationship between Merida and Elinor, her mother. Elinor wants Merida to put aside some of her more unladylike habits, Merida wants her freedom. Although our sympathies are clearly supposed to be with the girl, Elinor isn't written as a cold, heartless brute, she wants her daughter to make the best of a bad situation. Her journey is one of gaining a wider perspective and coming to see the woman her daughter will one day need. Merida comes perilously close to stereotypical tomboy territory at times but just avoids it, although there is the obligatory 'this corset is too tight'/busting scene she keeps her dress on for the full picture and beats the boys at their own game. That said, everyone outside of the immediate royal family is pretty much from stock types in this sort of situation, think of the villagers from Asterix in one of their periodic dust-ups and you'll guess where things are going. The characters of the three sons and three potential suitors for Merida's hand are odd, they look like three bigger roles that got left mostly on the soundstage floor. When they agree with Merida that perhaps they, rather than their parents, should be the ones to choose their destiny they haven't had the sort of roles in the film to justify the claim. But otherwise the script is as sharp as you would expect from Pixar. The film drags a little in it's second quarter as the plot bed for the rest of the film is laid in but the other three quarters are sharp and the action scenes impressive.
Sadly I don't think this film manages to pass the Bechdel test unless you count discussions between a human and a bear.