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Sleeping Beauty
Apr. 12th, 2010 04:59 pmThis 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.
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.
