Film: Frozen

[liv]

Reason for watching it: It's nominated for the long-form dramatic presentation Hugo, and I'm hoping to see most of the slate before Worldcon, (though probably not the random bits of superhero comic franchise). Also I've read some really interesting reviews and discussions of the film. staranise discusses how: even if you're avoiding someone because of how much they matter to you, all they see is your absence. jimhines points to it as a rare example of a realistic portrayal of an abusive relationship where: the charming fellow you just met — the man who flatters you, says all the right things, and makes you feel so amazing — turns out to be flat-out evil. elialshadowpine wrote something really interesting under lock. Although I have seen plenty of reviews that point out what's problematic about the film, it sounded like it might well be interesting as well as being a generic Disney property primarily marketed at young girls.

Circumstances of watching it: I was absolutely exhausted by the time I got to the end of term and the bank holiday weekend, so I spent most of the three days curled up with jack recuperating. It seemed like watching a film would be a relaxing thing to do, given we had a few hours spare for once. We hadn't previously tried streaming contemporary commercial films, as we usually either wait for something to come out on DVD or watch it at the cinema. We tried buying Frozen from Amazon's streaming service, but having taken our money they presented a film which played for 3-10 seconds before stopping for half a minute to load the next few frames. A bit of buffering I would accept but that was completely unwatchable. So I won't be giving Amazon any money for streamed films in the future. So we ended up paying again to buy it from Virgin's on-demand service, which was slightly more expensive but gave us a film which played smoothly throughout.

Verdict: Frozen is a fairly average kids' movie with some sublime moments, and makes a reasonable stab at subverting compulsory heterosexuality.

I am glad we did see Frozen; it's not a great work of art but it's decent entertainment for two (exhausted) adults. I don't think I'll vote for it to win the Hugo; Pacific Rim is better as visually pretty but largely mindless entertainment.

I really really liked the opening scene with the ice-cutters and the Sami-inspired music fading into a rather effective work-gang song. I wish we'd had more ice-cutters and more of that aesthetic in general, rather than just a prologue to establish Kristoff's back-story. The rest of the film is set in more or less generic sparkly theme-park winter-wonderland, which is disappointing; even the architecture is just variations on the usual fairytale castle theme, to the point where I wondered if they were deliberately riffing on the actual Disney logo. But I suppose you can't sell merch for decorating tween girls' bedrooms if you actually represent a stark northern Scandinavian landscape.

It felt rather like the film was dialling in the usual Disney comic sidekick thing. I was annoyed that the animators of Sven hadn't spent more time watching the gait and body language of actual reindeer. Though it's cool that Sven explicitly isn't a talking animal, I like the way that he's a personification or avatar of part of Kristoff's personality. Olof the talking snowman is annoying and not well animated and felt kind of unnecessary, but he does have a decent amount of pathos. And again, he and the snow monster are to some extent a part of Elsa's psyche, rather than just expecting the audience to suspend disbelief about the sentient, talking snow creatures. We happened to watch the credits because we were chatting about the film and hadn't bothered to turn the TV off, so we caught the little epilogue with the snow monster, which was utterly adorable. The trolls are cool, and again, I think the film could have done with more troll scenes and fewer generic fairytale castle scenes.

What I really liked is that the key narrative arc is about a relationship between sisters. There's no evil or ugly sister, nor saccharine bestest fwends theme, but an actual relationship where Elsa and Anna overcome some major difficulties and the true love that wins the day is not romantic but sisterly. More of this, please, Hollywood! Yes, I was annoyed by the thing where they completely blanked out the girls' facial expressions because Disney's historical strength at animating faces doesn't sell sufficiently "pretty" or "feminine" princesses. I think I would have noticed how bland the main characters' faces are compared to the secondary characters even if I hadn't previously read articles about it. But still, Elsa and Anna are both fully realized characters who get proper growth and adventures that really matter beyond just whether they'll manage to find husbands. In fact Elsa has no romance arc at all, but rather a breaking away from her over-protected childhood prison to become her own person and a queen fit to rule. And part of her growth involves changing from a vaguely ye olde princess dress to a stereotypically "sexy" glittery sheath dress, and she doesn't get punished for it. She doesn't dress up sexy to attract a man, her sexiness doesn't represent her evil nature, she doesn't return to modestly old-fashioned garments as a sign of her moral redemption.

And Anna. It's not subtle, but I was impressed with the deliberate skewering of the love at first sight trope. Particularly because the film didn't lampshade that Hans is evil; he's not ugly, he doesn't cackle or gloat about his evil plans to the audience behind Anna's back, he's not even too obviously over-intense and hyper-romantic. Anna and Hans fall in love like people in romantic tween girl movies fall in love, with lots of giggling and having fun together. I think as a kid I would have been genuinely surprised when he betrays her. The relationship between Anna and Kristoff I think is also handled well; there's room for an interpretation that they'll be friends as well as or even instead of being paired off after the movie ends. The trolls assuming that Anna and Kristoff must be a couple and trying to push them into marriage is ridiculed rather than valued. I liked that Kristoff proves his true love by being willing to give Anna up to the man he believes she really cares for, rather than being stalkery and possessive and trying to "win" her away from her fiancé. And I really really liked the climax where Anna (not a minor male character) makes the hero's choice and her happy ever after comes from being willing to sacrifice romantic love to save her sister. She's very teenagery, and it was cool seeing her getting a chance to grow and develop as a person rather than being dismissed as superficial. I would not at all say that the film is groundbreakingly feminist, but it's a lot less actively sexist than it might have been.

After we watched the film we went and looked up the plot of the original Snow Queen. Since the Wikipedia summary is very nearly as long as the story itself, I ended up reading the Hans Christian Andersen original aloud to jack. I understand why fairytale purists are disappointed, but wow, I am really quite glad that Disney didn't in fact make any kind of faithful (or even really connected) version of The Snow Queen, because that story is seriously incoherent. Though it's kind of impressive to see just how much influence it has on CS Lewis; there are really strong parallels between the Snow Queen and Kay, and the White Witch and Edmund in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and I'm pretty sure the relationship between Kay and Gerda influenced Polly and Digory in The magician's nephew.

Comments

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

Yay, we also watched it for the first time, a couple of weeks ago, and really enjoyed it, especially the depth of the relationship between the sisters. I found the "Do you wanna build a snowman?" sequence especially poignant. Then in "Let it Go" Elsa could have easily become a straight-up villain as she cast off rules etc, and it was impressive that she didn't, but remained more subtle than that.

I agree Olaf was unnecessary, but I thought his "Summer" song was hilarious. "Winter's a good time to stay in and cuddle, but put me in summer and I'll be a ... happy snowman!"

On the theme of subverting the love-at-first-sight trope, have you seen "Enchanted"? It's a Disney film from about five years ago, and more explicitly a parody of their early films. Stereotypical fairytale princess, about to marry her true love who she's just met, is cursed by a wicked witch and sent to "a place where there are no happily ever afters" - real-life New York. It also sends up the talking animal trope, in that one of her talking animal friends comes with her and is upset to discover he can no longer talk in the real world.

[liv]

Definitely liked Do you wanna build a snowman, including the way the motif is reprised through the film. And Olof does have his moments, but it just kind of felt like they were playing lip-service to the funny sidekick tradition.

I haven't seen Enchanted. I'm not a big enough Disney fan to see everything that comes out; I usually wait until I see lots of buzz about a particular offering. I'm somewhat interested to see Brave and Tangled, but maybe I should add Enchanted to the list, it sounds quite cute.

[rysmiel]

Oh, Enchanted is lovely; really understands what's worth having about the positive elements of Disney princesses and has fun gently sending them up. Clever and meta and still has a heart, I think you would like it.

(Brave, though: just no. It doesn't stop being cultural appropriation just because you're appropriating from people who could pass as white in the contemporary US.)

[liv]

Thank you, that does sound like a really strong vote in favour of Enchanted. I had temporarily forgotten that Brave was supposed to be set in Scotland; I think that might very well annoy me too much to be worth it.

[woodpijn.livejournal.com]

This subthread has made me notice for the first time that Enchanted follows the same past-participle naming pattern as Frozen and Tangled.

[ephemera]

my niece was enthralled at the cinema, so I'm saving it until I can watch it with her - your write up gives me hope that it might be fun in it's own right as well ;)