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matrilWell, we had a nice winter break, even though it included driving through a horrendous snowstorm to get to my parents' house in Pennsylvania. While there, we finally watched Brave. It's been a few weeks and I'm still trying to piece together my thoughts about it. I can't even give a simple answer of whether I liked it or not. On the one hand, every time the movie flashbacked to moments between the mother and the young Merida, I got teary-eyed, and it was a highly-charged emotional experience for me in general. On the other hand, I had many moments of twitchty dissatisfaction that I'm still struggling to articulate. Let me see what I can do.
So, I wasn't even fully cognizant of this until I read it in another review, but for a film that revolves around a female-female relationship, there sure aren't many female characters. I can recall four. Not just four main characters (there's only two of them) but four altogether. Um, what? Merida has no friends but her horse. Her mother doesn't even have that. How achingly lonely she must be! Also, unless that shriek-prone servant woman and the witch have, between the two of them, mothered all the rest of the inhabitants of the land, how are there any people? How have they not begun to die out with only three women in existence?
Yeah. Just a thought.
The other main problem, not at all uncommon in stories attempting to show women as strong characters, is that all the men are oafish idiots. Obviously the king must be marginally competent in battle, but otherwise, when the queen is gone he's good for pretty much nothing. She single-handedly keeps everything from falling apart. And you know what? That stinks for women and men both. Women shouldn't have to carry the entire weight of civilizing society on their oh-so-delicate shoulders, and men shouldn't be dismissed as slobbering doofuses who never grow up and always need mother figures to care for them.
I would have liked the movie to acknowledge at least a few other points. When Merida complains about how her brothers never have to do anything they don't want to do, I wish someone would have pointed out they were still children while she was approaching adulthood. Just a little indicator that it was the age difference, and not the gender, that led to an apparent unfairness in their responsibilities; the implication that when they get older, they'll have to shoulder their own share of duties. Frankly I found the triplets kind of unnecessary, both plot and character-wise. I suppose they were there for comic relief, but it seldom worked for me.
Pixar, in my view, has two great strengths in storytelling. One is the inventive worldbuilding; the other is the creative, mindbending storylines. Well, the worldbuilding here wasn't really anything special. Just a magical version of old-timey Britain. Very pretty, but nothing like the worlds they're created heretofore. The storyline? Again, nothing mindbending. I could guess where it was headed pretty much from the start. That's not to say it wasn't entertaining, but having seen them do better many many times, I was disappointed that the first female-centered story was given something so run-of-the-mill.
The ending was somewhat muddled. I appreciated that after insisting "It's not my fault" over and over, Merida realized she had to apologize and admit her wrongdoing to truly mend the rift. But it didn't seem to lead to much long-term change. She had one moment of humbling herself, and then her mother was happy to let her continue her gleeful horsebacking and bow-and-arrowing, with the added benefit of her mother's company. Um, reality? Adulthood is still going to come, with all the added burdens of being royalty. Particularly if the men are as hopeless without female guidance as they were portrayed here. I would have liked to see that gleeful fun tempered with the occasional studying or embroidering or something. (And seriously, why can't we ever have a princess who likes embroidery? I like it myself now and then. There's nothing inherently demeaning about it, as long as she has other ambitions as well.) Anyway, I loved the scenes with little Merida and her mother, and I liked a film that focused on such a relationship, but I feel like overall there was just so much missed potential.
So, I wasn't even fully cognizant of this until I read it in another review, but for a film that revolves around a female-female relationship, there sure aren't many female characters. I can recall four. Not just four main characters (there's only two of them) but four altogether. Um, what? Merida has no friends but her horse. Her mother doesn't even have that. How achingly lonely she must be! Also, unless that shriek-prone servant woman and the witch have, between the two of them, mothered all the rest of the inhabitants of the land, how are there any people? How have they not begun to die out with only three women in existence?
Yeah. Just a thought.
The other main problem, not at all uncommon in stories attempting to show women as strong characters, is that all the men are oafish idiots. Obviously the king must be marginally competent in battle, but otherwise, when the queen is gone he's good for pretty much nothing. She single-handedly keeps everything from falling apart. And you know what? That stinks for women and men both. Women shouldn't have to carry the entire weight of civilizing society on their oh-so-delicate shoulders, and men shouldn't be dismissed as slobbering doofuses who never grow up and always need mother figures to care for them.
I would have liked the movie to acknowledge at least a few other points. When Merida complains about how her brothers never have to do anything they don't want to do, I wish someone would have pointed out they were still children while she was approaching adulthood. Just a little indicator that it was the age difference, and not the gender, that led to an apparent unfairness in their responsibilities; the implication that when they get older, they'll have to shoulder their own share of duties. Frankly I found the triplets kind of unnecessary, both plot and character-wise. I suppose they were there for comic relief, but it seldom worked for me.
Pixar, in my view, has two great strengths in storytelling. One is the inventive worldbuilding; the other is the creative, mindbending storylines. Well, the worldbuilding here wasn't really anything special. Just a magical version of old-timey Britain. Very pretty, but nothing like the worlds they're created heretofore. The storyline? Again, nothing mindbending. I could guess where it was headed pretty much from the start. That's not to say it wasn't entertaining, but having seen them do better many many times, I was disappointed that the first female-centered story was given something so run-of-the-mill.
The ending was somewhat muddled. I appreciated that after insisting "It's not my fault" over and over, Merida realized she had to apologize and admit her wrongdoing to truly mend the rift. But it didn't seem to lead to much long-term change. She had one moment of humbling herself, and then her mother was happy to let her continue her gleeful horsebacking and bow-and-arrowing, with the added benefit of her mother's company. Um, reality? Adulthood is still going to come, with all the added burdens of being royalty. Particularly if the men are as hopeless without female guidance as they were portrayed here. I would have liked to see that gleeful fun tempered with the occasional studying or embroidering or something. (And seriously, why can't we ever have a princess who likes embroidery? I like it myself now and then. There's nothing inherently demeaning about it, as long as she has other ambitions as well.) Anyway, I loved the scenes with little Merida and her mother, and I liked a film that focused on such a relationship, but I feel like overall there was just so much missed potential.
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Date: 2013-01-18 10:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 03:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2013-01-19 07:44 am (UTC)You could see what the movie was trying to do in showing Merida needing her mother's skills -- in the middle, when she has to subdue the roomful of quarreling men while her mother sneaks upstairs ("Project! Everyone has to hear you!") and of course when she's trying to mend the tapestry and doing an incredibly pathetic job of it -- but I felt that it went by too fast and the ending leaned too much towards Merida's mother giving in to her rather than both of them compromising and Merida accepting the responsibilities of adulthood -- if nothing else, if she intends on being a solo queen of that realm, she'd better really be prepared! I did love the mother-daughter scenes, however -- plus the fact that when Merida does the cliched I Choose Me And Show Up All My Suitors bit, consequences actually ensue in that the suitors' clans are really pissed off.
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Date: 2013-01-19 03:00 pm (UTC)