Sleeping Beauty

[osprey_archer]

This weekend I filled a terrible gap in my knowledge of Disney cinematography, and watched Sleeping Beauty. This is clearly one of those movies you have to see as a child, because I'm just not feeling it. The pacing seems off-kilter (it takes Aurora nearly an hour to prick herself on the spindle!) and the movie doesn't have the visual richness of The Princess and the Frog or Beauty and the Beast.

The film is not entirely uninteresting, though. Despite the name, the movie isn't really about Sleeping Beauty or her suitor, Prince Philip. The real protagonists are the Good Fairies, three middle-aged women who get by far more screen time than everyone else - who provide both the comedy and the pathos for the film - who do everything but kill the dragon for the Prince (and even then, he can't quite effect its demise until they enchant his sword).

This, apparently, is one way to tell a story with a middle-aged protagonist: pretend the tale is someone else's, and give the protag wings.

***

Apropos of nothing, but I thought you should know: Long ago, when foreign names were always translated to their English counterparts in history books... Ivan the Terrible was known to schoolchildren as John the Dread.

Comments

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

John the Dread, eh? I guess Ivan is the Russian-name version of the name we know in English as John?

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

It is! I have no idea what kind of divergent evolution made one name branch in John and Ivan... I suspect I would need to become a linguistic bushwhacker to find out.

[inspirethoughts.livejournal.com]

I believe it is. Ivan is a slavic name for the English name of John.

[novangla.livejournal.com]

Oh em geeeeee but Sleeping Beauty is my favorite!

Sure, the pace is off-kilter, but only if you are watching it to see her sleep. Because that's not the actual point of the story -- it's about the process of restoring her to royalty. The prick occurs shortly before the great climax, Philip's St. George moment, which is placed toward the end of the story, where climaxes ought to go.

I don't think I'd call the fairies the protagonists, either. I mean, sure they are on the good side, and main characters, but I see it more as an... ensemble cast. The fairies are very important, but they aren't the ones who actually have to overcome anything or make any transformation. Aurora has to go from being a happy country girl in love to a princess with a strange family to the princess she becomes in the end; Philip rebels against his father and has to overcome Maleficent and redeem the kingdom. The fairies are the vehicles for the whole thing, and they also of course are the ones who concoct a plan and have to give up Aurora, but they're more like guardians than heroines. I like it, though -- instead of featuring one protagonist against the world, it's a team against one force of chaos/evil.

I love the style -- it's flat, but in a deliberate way, to bring out the medieval aspects. And I like that everyone important is introduced straight out, so you don't waste a million years meeting the cast, like in a lot of stories (not that those are all bad). And the music from Tchaikovsky is wonderful. And I'm all for heroics and the shield of virtue and sword of truth conquering evil. :D

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

I think you're right - ensemble cast is a better term for it - I meant rather, that they seem like characters in their own right unlike for instance Cinderella's fairy godmother. (I suppose it would be tough for a single fairy godmother to bicker with herself.)

I still think Philip is a bit of a wuss, as the fairies basically blast every obstacle out of his path except for the dragon itself. There isn't really time for anything else, though, given the length of the movie. I might cut down the scene of the two kings drinking, which is rather lengthy given how little occurs, to give Philip more time to shine... But at least he gets a good shot in when he chucks the Sword of Truth into the dragon's chest?

(As a side note - in Russian we've been learning about Tchaikovsky's Sleeping Beauty as part of our quest to understand verbal adjectives. It's funny how things sometimes pop up in multiple places in one's life at the same time.)

I do appreciate the up-front introductions. Sometimes I think that modern artists have taken "show don't tell" a twitch too far - sometimes, all you really need is to say "And this is Suzie's fiance!" instead of waffling around with dates and rings and tra la la.

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

MERRYWEATHER.

I did love the art a lot more after seeing all the special features on the 2-disc set.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

YES. MERRYWEATHER. I am sad for Merryweather's sake to find that almost everyone pictures Aurora in the pink version of her princess dress, even though Merryweather wanted blue.

Perhaps I should get the second disc & watch the special features. (I have a strange weakness for special features. Especially special features about YOU GUYS YOU GUYS THIS IS HOW WE DID OUR ART ISN'T IT AWESOME? I've seen most the Lord of the Rings special features multiple times.)

[entwashian.livejournal.com]

There's a feature called "4 artists paint one tree" and it's the animators just doing their own fine art thing. So cool.

They were also really excited to do this movie, because it was the first Disney feature done in widescreen, so there's talk about that.

And my other favorite feature is some of the live action reference photos/clips they used for animating.

[silksieve.livejournal.com]

Oh, but one of my favorite things about Disney's Sleeping Beauty is the art! The stylistic drawing and coloring all reference medieval art, especially in the angles and lines. None of the animated films that came before or after look the same way, although I think it did pave the way for the intense line-work of the films of the 60's and 70's.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Now I feel completely untutored in medieval art. :/ I suppose this is the excuse I've been waiting for to take that completely self-indulgent medieval art class...

[girl-called-sun.livejournal.com]

John the Dread! Much more polite, how English is that?

When you watch Disney is important - Robin Hood is my favourite, and The Little Mermaid scares me still, because Ursula terrified me so much when I was 9.

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Yes, I can totally see that with Ursula. People complain Disney movies nothing but saccharine doe-eyed woodland creatures and fluttering birdies... but I don't think that's at all a sustainable criticism, because almost everyone seems to have a memory of "The Disney Movie I Saw at an Impressionable Age that Terrified Me."

I found both Alice in Wonderland and Pinocchio petrifying, but neither were quite as horror-inducing as The Lion King: HIS DADDY DIED!!! I saw it in theaters and had that scene (and all the scenes with the hyenas! Those horrid hyenas!) etched in my brain for life.

[anait.livejournal.com]

The real protagonists are the Good Fairies, three middle-aged women who get by far more screen time than everyone else - who provide both the comedy and the pathos for the film - who do everything but kill the dragon for the Prince (and even then, he can't quite effect its demise until they enchant his sword).

This is very interesting, what you say! I watched the film too long ago to remember more than the obvious things you get as a kid, but: there's this article about the origins of many of our modern fairy tales that I absolutely love, and your wise fairy godmothers show up in it. I think you would enjoy it.

http://www.endicott-studio.com/rdrm/forconte.html

[osprey-archer.livejournal.com]

Hey, you know what would be wicked cool? A book (or maybe a movie) about the salonnières. Or hey, a TV series! There's clearly enough brilliance and creativity and scandal and being banished from Paris for hours of fun!