Pixar at its creative best, Brave is the studio's most elaborate and poignant story with a narrative replete with subtle nuances and a story with tremendous heart.

Rating: 9/10 (4 August 2012)

Resonant with Finding Nemo, Brave is a deep, moving meditation on parental love in the midst of simmering adolescent rebelliousness. While Finding Nemo takes the form of an Odyssean epic, Brave develops into an immaculate folk legend delivered with a seamless subtlety. The story draws from a well of thorough historical and cultural research. Equally uncompromising is the dazzling wit that is characteristic of a Pixar film and a brilliant voice cast that carries the humour spectacularly. The creative imagination is widely-inspired, with distinct overtones of the warm, loving playfulness of Disney, sincerity and maturity of Pixar, heart-warming soundtrack like Dreamworks and the magic of Studio Ghibli. At the emotional core of the film is an overwhelming story about a mother's love for her daughter. Brave is as much about Merida as Finding Nemo is about Nemo. It is Queen Elinor's story, as the latter is Marlin's.
The story itself is crafted brilliantly, with a level of thought that surpasses most of Pixar's previous productions. On the surface, the film swiftly retorts to and parodies Disney's model of princess stories. For starters, the marriage plot is realistic: Merida is forced into marriage not by adamant parents who do not believe in love (and vehemently believe in class hierarchy), but by the requirements of a political alliance between the Lords and King. This is especially significant in Scottish history, where princesses and betrothals are of immense political significance in a feudal age around the time of Viking conquest. The buffoonish male characters and caricatured Princes Charming are a clever subversion of Disney's anodyne faerie tale endings: the strength and independence of female characters in Brave was so obvious that Merida accomplishes a feat 'only the ancient kings were brave enough to do' in the opening credits. There are also token Scottish clichés (haggis, kilts and drinking) as well as witty Scottish in-jokes (Doric accents and the Wicker Man Festival). The first act is essentially a light-hearted ceilidh that parodies the Disney formula and also sets up a sharp contrast for the darker tone of the film in subsequent sections.
While launching itself off a clever and subversive parody of Disney princesses, the film turns sharply into a folk legend inspired by Celtic lore around forests, stone circles and the beliefs of spiritual communities situated in the highlands. The symbolism is very subtle: the recurrent bear trope, the Witch's woodcarvings that resembled pagan sculptures, the offhanded nod to the Wicker Man and the trope of the wills-o'-the-wisp. Like in Finding Nemo, the narrative is aware of its own textual structure: Marlin's adventure is passed on through word of mouth like how classical epics were in ancient Greece. Similarly, Elinor and Merida are aware of the significance of legends and folk tales as the story of the ancient kingdom converges with the central plot to build towards its climax. As the film culminates in Merida weeping and praying for her mother to change back, the Lords are shown standing with their sons and the triplets are cringing behind their father. Even the film short that ran before the film, La Luna, was a primer for the trope of parenthood.
Carrying this heavy story is a vibrant cast of well-written characters (and deeply enjoyable performances by the glorious cast). Beneath the boisterous and buffoonish exterior, the men were brave, loyal and loving. Even each of the triplets have distinct characteristics about them. Merida's character arc is an honest story of adolescence, as the conflict between her and her mother arise out of misunderstood love and mutual hesitation: neither wants to hurt the other, but they always hesitate to speak to each other. Queen Elinor, the heroine, is the proper lady of the Throne. She embodies the dilemma between being mother and being queen: she herself had made many sacrifices in her life, growing up to be Queen, and therefore expects her daughter to have the same sense of duty and obedience. But when she sees her daughter straitjacketed by the ceremonial dress or when she sees how her throwing Merida's bow in the fire crushed her daughter, she was overwhelmed by her dilemma.
Bringing all of this together is an intricate plot: the dramatic irony as Fergus attacks his bear wife, who he mistakes to be a wild bear in his disbelief in magic, causes most of the tension in the charged climax. But even the subtler details, ones the film never draws obvious attention to, are carefully nuanced: the necklace Merida exchanges for the spell cast on her mother was an heirloom, last worn by her mother on her birthday. The set pieces themselves are replete with symbolism as the story revolves around the stone circle. The opening scene, as Elinor rides away with Merida, foreshadows the rest of the film and the story is complete in a full circle as Merida and Elinor ride into the woods together. Even the poignant soundtrack, which itself is both beautiful and authentic, lends itself to the story: the songs are about Elinor (except, of course, the opening theme 'Touch the Sky') and how she is confined by the crown and by her hesitation and how she longs to right her relationship with Merida more than Merida does with hers with Elinor.
Although not as quirky as Pixar's acclaimed classics, like the journey of toys aware of their own pernicious commercial status or the love story of an anthropomorphic trash compactor, Brave is a radical film for the studio, brilliant in its own right and towering above its contemporaries (the closest second being Dreamworks's How To Train Your Dragon, which is almost textbook and insipid in comparison). Brave is heartfelt and intelligent in its story, clever and sharp in its humour and sincere and unpatronising in its delivery; it may not be the best of Pixar, but it is undoubtedly its greatest film and a watershed for animated cinema.