So I saw Frozen today. I cried.
Which should be no surprise to anybody.
After talking at (and with) a couple friends, I’ve developed
a fairly cohesive review of my experience. As should be apparent by the title,
this will contain spoilers. Please read responsibly.
~
First impression of the opening title screen and first
scene: Dude, music.
And then… everything changes. Kind of.
Looking back, the opening scene has little to do with the
rest of the film. So we see Kristoff and Sven’s origin, but what the heck
happened to the rest of the ice men?
Change scene: we peek into the childhood of two sisters:
Elsa and Anna. They’re adorable little princesses. They frolic, then something
bad happens. We glimpse Elsa’s magical abilities (“winter” powers), and the resulting
consequences. Terrified of a power she has, but doesn’t understand, Elsa learns
she can accidentally harm those closest to her. Because of some vague warning from
a few stone trolls, her parents shut her away from her sister and her world.
She is shaped by a very strong belief more powerful than her magic: she must
stifle and hide a part of herself to keep herself and her world safe. It’s the
twisted interpretation of “with great power comes great responsibility.” Aka: “Don’t
kill your sister, cause you totally will, even if you don’t mean to. So, just,
hide your face or something. Cause, you know, shame! Dishonor! Dishonor on your
whole family! Dishonor on you, dishonor on your cow, dis-“ er, ahem. Anyway. While she lives with her
family, she is still separated and isolated from them.
Time passes, other stuff happens, and Elsa soon has to face
the fact that she cannot hide forever because of, you know, circumstances. She’s
terrified, naturally, and Anna has no idea why her sister is as cold and
reserved as she is.
But let me take a break here: Where the hell did Elsa’s
magic come from? She was born with it, not “cursed.” Okay. Does magic run in
the family, then? Why are her parents so inept at helping her harness her
powers? Presumably, if they think she can just wear some gloves and everything
will be fine, then ice magic has either never been a big problem in their
family, or it’s a new thing. Why was she born with it, but no one else in her
family has it? What is her magic’s purpose (besides being a metaphor for being “cold”
and “unfeeling”)? How does it work? How did it hurt Anna the way it did? Why did
Anna’s memories of magic have to be removed entirely? I get the fear, I get the
desire and urge to control something that isn’t understood, I get the love
themes, I get the acceptance and the sisterhood themes.
But, but questions!!
I like the direction Disney is going with these princess
stories. I’m guessing Brave, which focused on the mother/daughter relationship,
broke open a new paradigm: stories about women protagonists without a romantic
center. This is a new direction for Disney and sadly, a new direction for
mainstream film and media in general. While Frozen is not devoid of romantic
relationships/interests, I found those that WERE included were more self-aware
and organic. Anna starts off excited about finding her “one” true love (which I
see more as excitement about finding love and intimacy in general; she too has grown
up so isolated, but without her sister’s internal struggle). Anna’s naiveté
(which the film is self-aware of) kickstarts a journey to understand what “love”
means as a whole. How SHE creates love herself, and how love defines relationships,
period, whether it’s between sisters, friends, or partners/romantic.
While Disney may be heading that direction, their vision and execution is not perfect. I sense the legacy of these films shifting but Frozen as a
whole is disjointed and scattered. My primary issue with this film is the same
issue I had with Brave: too much going on and not enough focus/exploration on
the stronger themes.
I can’t decide whether Olaf the snow-dork was a cute comic-relief
character that worked within the story, or if he was misplaced. ( Olaf is
CLEARLY a big hit with the kids and he’s a great marketing tool; I can’t fault
Disney for that.) I get that he is a bridge character between the sisters,
linking their past and their current struggle. But if that’s the case, I wonder
if there was a better way to use that character. What if the comic relief came from
elsewhere and his character explained (or even hint at) the source of Elsa’s
magic or its significance?
What if Elsa’s power was somehow connected to Anna in a
bigger way than “oh, if I don’t hide it, I’ll hurt her again?” What if Elsa’s
magic developed to entertain and protect Anna, out of love, but when it
backfired and Elsa accidentally hurt her sister, it raged out of her control? What
if the ice magic was an ancient gift bestowed on the rulers of the kingdom, but
over the years it was forgotten and Elsa was the first child in generations to
have it?
Elsa has a power she is afraid of, and Anna’s power is that she faces her fears. Elsa’s journey to
truly embracing herself revolves around her relationship with her sister, just
as Anna’s journey to understand what love is revolves around the same thing.
While the ice magic serves as a powerful metaphor, ultimately I think it
becomes a vague situation for the story to happen around, not through. Like at
the beginning? When the royal family goes off in the night to find those trolls
to save little Anna? The mind is easy to change but not the heart? What exactly
did Elsa DO? Give Anna a bad case of brain freeze? (I admit I was a little
confused at that bit. I figure when someone gets hit in the head with a bolt of
ice, they’d either end up with a bad headache or, you know, no head. What was
the difference between the physical/material ice and the “magic disease ice?”)
And oh god, those trolls.
There was another chance to give a little back-story or context for how magic
functions in this world, but no. Sure, these trolls seem to have all this
knowledge of magic, but besides ridding little Anna of a bad ice-headache and a
vague warning to Elsa and her parents of “beauty” and “danger” if you don’t get
that darn frost problem under control, what do these supposedly wise, old
trolls do?
Apparently, kidnap the kid from the opening scene, raise him
as their own, and then sing a little song mid-movie about fixer-upper
relationships. A weird song about fixer-upper relationships. I get it was
supposed to build the relationship between two of the main characters, but,
really? And they look like stone smurfs. Smurfs. Stone. Smurfs.
What?
Not only did the story feel disjointed in parts, but the
music was aaaaall over the place. I am not musically educated enough to
articulate WHY, but that’s exactly how I experienced it. Intense, powerful
opening music and then… where the hell was that during the rest of it?
I found “Let it Go,” sung by Elsa, to be one of the
strongest songs overall, and one of the most impactful. Elsa goes from barely
keeping her magic hidden to completely unleashing it from her fingertips,
creating this gorgeous ice castle. But Olaf the snow-dork has his own style of
song (which is admittedly adorable), the trolls have their own weird song (a
total wtf moment), a few Disney-style pop songs, and… I don’t really remember
much else. Regardless of whether or not the songs had merit, the main thing I
remember is… not remembering them very well.
Growing up, Disney movies were all about the music for me.
As questionable and cringe-worthy as Pocahontas was, damnit that movie had some
amazing music. Lion King? Unforgettable, plus my all-time favorite villain song.
Each decade, each “age” of Disney had its own flavor, animation, story, and
perhaps most importantly for many of us, music.
Watching Frozen in a theater filled with children and
families, I wondered how this generation of kids will remember the music. To
them, is it the best thing ever, and am I just biased because I’m not their age
anymore? Perhaps.
I really did enjoy the film. The visuals of ice and snow are
stunning, the journeys of both sisters are wonderfully done and tender (like a
steak, hehe). Character dialogue and exchange felt organic and fluid, right
down to the most subtle of body language details, which made the motivation and
development of each character clear and engaging. While largely scattered, the
music did contain a couple gems that I hope kids will sing loudly in the
backseats of cars, much to their parents’ chagrin or joy (or both). The kids
sitting with us in the theater loved the movie, and were very vocal about it.
And while I question how focused the story was and the roles some of the side
characters played, I think those critiques are best served in thinking about
how we might make even better films, stories, whatever, in the future.
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