From the Arvhices: Cinderella (2015) review

The basics of the Cinderalla story are pretty well known. The story nearly always is set in some fantastical version of either very early modern or (more typically) pre-modern times; the middle ages, the renaissance, something like that. A young girl (usually named Ella, Cinderella, or some variant) from the lower gentry loses her loving mother at a young age. Her father remarries, to a widow above his own social station. Cinderella's new stepmother brings into the household just about every negative aspect of upper class life – and an active, obvious scorn for her new stepdaughter. Cinderella's father dies, and her stepmother proceeds to turn her into a degraded servant, while pampering and spoiling her own daughters, who prove to share their mother's vile temperament. With the help of a fairy godmother, a good deal of faith and magic, and (sometimes) her own ingenuity, Cinderella, though in a degraded state, is able to attend a royal ball and attract the attention of a Prince. After the magic wears out, and she returns to her degraded state, the Prince is able to find her, and claim and marry her, using a glass slipper she's left behind at the ball as a means to identify her.

There are variations in the story sometimes. In the opera La Cenerentola, the fairy godmother is replaced by a “philosopher.” I've never liked the result, frankly. In the Drew Barrymore movie Ever After, the supernatural element was removed, replaced by human ingenuity and the presence of Leonardo da Vinci (no I'm not kidding). I adored the result, and I remember this film very fondly.

This new adaptation of the story played it more or less straight, following the most-famous version of the story, the animated 1950 film (which, just like this version, was produced by Disney) and let me tell you: It worked. It worked well. It worked great actually. This is the first movie I've reviewed this year I definitely can say I actually liked. Not just appreciated or tolerated. But liked. And liked a lot.

The key I think was in making only minor alterations to the familiar story. Indeed now that I think about it, most of what they did can be called specifications more than alterations. The most important “specification” of the action in the story made by this film is that the characters are active participants in their own lives, not mere creatures of fate.

Here's one example of what I mean: Cinderella, though degraded, never submits and never surrenders her spirit. She has told her now-dead parents that she will have courage and be kind, and she is going to do it. One character asks her why she simply does not leave the house. Her answer is that it is her family's ancestral home and she will not leave it in her stepmother's hands. It would have been easy to imply that she simply was too beaten down to leave, or was under threat, or something like that. Instead the movie makes it a choice. A questionable one to be sure, and I don't think the film demands we agree with it, but it is a noble choice, correct or not. The actress plays Cinderella's quiet, frustrated defiance straight and it works.

Here's another example: Cinderella doesn't meet the Prince for the first time at the ball, as if memory serves was the case in the 1950 animated film, but rather they meet by chance out in the woods, and they enchant each other not with magic, spells, or fate, but with wit, charm, and personality. She refuses at this early meeting to give a name, and he refers to himself as “Kit” and describes himself as an “apprentice.” (As he'll later point out, this is true. He is learning the trade of being King.) At their meeting they both ride horses, and they circle each other throughout their conversation, with both their faces surprised, wary, and hopeful, all in about equal amounts. The camera follows their dance on horses, whirling around them as they slowly move around each other, in a gleeful foreshadow of the dance they later are to share at the ball.

And here's another: In the movie's critical last moments it is Cinderella's and the Prince's actions, not the outcome of the slipper test, that really determines the ending. One has the impression that, no matter what the outcome of their romance, the Prince has learned well, the Kingdom is in good hands.

And one final example involves the wicked stepmother: This character plainly is wicked from the outset. (Her mistreatment of Cinderella begins right away, it just gets worse once her husband dies, and she represents the worst of the upper crust, including but not limited to extreme hypocrisy.) Despite this, however, the film allows her to make a case for herself at the end that she hasn't really been wicked at all, but has been a victim of fate and circumstance. The film lets her make her case and it's up to us to remember that she's lying through her teeth.

The world the action inhabits is right. It is no specific time period (most of the costumes are very early modern, some are Renaissance, and the wicked stepmother in some frames vaguely channels a wicked, hypocritical version of a 1940s housewife. The world feels lived in, at no point did I find myself questioning what was where, and how the characters got to certain locations. (This is a very important point in fantasy, where sometimes a lack of good world-building can be distracting. In the case of this film, either they paid world-building some mind, or they made me not care. Either way, I liked the result.)

The music is rich, lush, and manages to be both omnipresent and non-overwhelming, at the same time. It is not a musical film, but a character's singing plays a critical role in the ending.

Everything is played straight. The actors all approach their roles, heroic or villainous, with 100% sincere earnestness. All of them approach the material as though it not just were possible, but natural, and happening, right before their eyes.

I think the best way to sum up my thoughts on this film are as follows: If you like the basics of the Cinderella myth, this is about as good a live action version of it as you can get. It's not like Ever After, which potentially has things to offer you even if you aren't into the basics of the myth. If you find this myth silly, if you can't get into it because of its sentimentality or something like that, then don't bother.

Fortunately for me, though, I could go with it, and I went with it, and enjoyed the experience quite, quite thoroughly.