Pretty, pretty, pretty...

Rating: 5/10 (24 August 2012)

This is a film about how important it is to be told fairy tales as a child. Because if you are, you learn early on that if you formulate a wish or a spell with ANY degree of ambiguity, you are likely to get the complete opposite of what you actually wanted. So it was no big surprise that Merida got something she didn't want at all. "I want my mother to change" is possibly the most ambiguous wish I have ever heard. I don't know why the witch cast the same spell on Elinor as on the prince of yore but she seemed like a bit of a con artist anyway, so maybe she doesn't know any other spells. Maybe she had stolen the recipe for the spell from a proper witch.

The morale of the story is as Disney as it gets. A young, pretty woman fights for ideas that are revolutionary in her time but completely mainstream in our own day and age. Because while Merida might be Brave, Disney most certainly is not, which is why the "inspirational" speeches the protagonists give at the end of their films tend to infuriate thinking people with their banality.

The notion that proper communication is the universal remedy for all conflict is also central to this film. As soon as the mother truly understands her daughter, she, and later all the tribal chiefs, suddenly cast their aspirations to power, their sense of tradition and propriety and their plans for the future of the kingdom aside. The belief that honest conversation and sharing of all the important facts and viewpoints necessarily leads to a universally accepted consensus seems to be a very American one, as apparent in the political debates of the country as in its film industry but hardly anyone else - except maybe for Bollywood - seems to believe in this formula.

The film is really pretty though, and the characters, while not terribly complex, are likable. The scenery is very, very beautiful. So if you are planning to see the film, go see it while it's still in the cinema because it probably loses most of its charm when not viewed on the big screen.