"Better a fallen rocket than never a burst of light."
~ Tom Stoppard, The Invention of Love

Friday, August 7, 2015

Sleeping Beauty (1959)

I haven’t seen this movie in ages, not since I was young enough to be freaked out by Maleficent and not entirely sure of all that was going on.  I’ve rewatched some Disney classics as an adult, but not this one, so, it was high on the list for my periodic tour of Disney’s past and present.

Not too much need for a synopsis, right?  At her birth, the blessings Princess Aurora receives from three good fairies are overshadowed by the curse bestowed by the wicked Maleficent (because…?  The only reason given is that she wasn’t invited to the new baby’s birthday bash, but really, she just seems to get off on horrifying people.)  She dooms the princess to death-by-poisoned-spindle before her 16th birthday, and while the good fairies can’t undo it, they can add a few caveats – they amend it from death to a sleeping curse, and they allow for True Love’s Kiss to break it.  Still, the royal family doesn’t intend to take any risks.  Every spinning wheel in the land is destroyed (I guess all their cloth is imported for 16 years?  Hey, maybe Maleficent is just a really dedicated Big Textile lobbyist from a foreign kingdom!), and the fairies take the baby to be raised in hiding in a woodland cottage.  Nothing can go wrong, right?

In general, I’d say it’s decent.  Despite its datedness, there’s not a lot to seriously rankle me.  There’s the fairytale-love-at-first-sight thing, of course, and Aurora isn’t a terribly strong heroine.  The movie doesn’t give her much a chance to be anything – most of her experiences are exerted on her by outside forces, and the nature of the spell means she can’t really have agency in her own rescue.  Personality-wise, she’s mainly just soft and pleasant.  However, I anticipated this going in, and it feels par-for-the-course for the times.  In context, not hugely objectionable.

For the positives, I enjoy the connection made between Aurora and Prince Phillip.  Even though they skip tons of steps between meeting and true love, “Once upon a Dream,” their song, puts a more mythic spin on the relationship; Phillip’s arrival feels like Aurora’s dreams coming to fruition.  I also like that Phillip is drawn to Aurora before he even sees her (by her singing voice) and that, upon meeting, neither realizes they’ve actually been betrothed since Aurora was born, allowing them to approach each other without baggage.  And it helps that, by my recollection, Phillip is the first Disney prince to have an actual personality.  He’s ardent and a little cheeky, and he has to bribe his horse to get it to do what he wants.  In short, he’s entertaining, and it seems reasonable that a teenage girl who’s been raised in seclusion would get hung up on him.

It goes without saying that, nonexistent motives or not, Maleficent is an excellent villain.  I mean, come on – the woman can turn into a dragon!  How cool is that?  The fairies are mostly fun, and I like that, living incognito (ie, without magic,) they’re a little bumbling and disaster-prone.  I like the trope of powerful beings having to slum it like us mortals.  Since Aurora doesn’t get to be very hands-on, it’s good that they’re fighting in her corner and it’s not just the prince coming to her rescue.  The fairies have a lot to do, including contributions to the action sequences.  Lastly, there are bits of sly humor that I didn’t expect at all; I laughed out loud when Phillip entreats his father to stop living in the past, reminding him, “It’s the 14th century!”

Warnings

Some scary (Maleficent-related) moments.

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