Maleficent stars Angelina Jolie as the titular fairy, Sharlto
Copley as Stefan and Elle Fanning as Princess Aurora. Imelda Staunton, Juno
Temple and Lesley Manville are the three pixies, Knotgrass, Thistletwit
and Flittle respectively. Sam Riley is Diaval, Brenton Thwaites, Prince
Phillip and Kenneth Cranham King Henry. The film is directed by Robert
Stromberg and written by Linda Woolverton, sort of, but owes a good deal of
debt to many other writers of the other versions of the story. It is, of
course, a Disney film.
You already know the story: yam’s write up above outlines
it effectively. Perhaps the whole yarn isn’t so firmly embedded in our cultural
unconscious as Snow White but it’s pretty close. At a christening, invited
guests dish out presents to a royal princess. An evil fairy, hacked off that
she wasn’t invited in the first place, turns up anyway and – instead of a
blessing – bestows a curse. Before her sixteenth birthday, the child will prick
her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. She cackles maniacally
and vanishes. One good fairy, who hasn’t given her blessing yet, revises the
curse and states that, instead of dying, she will fall into a deep sleep which
can only be woken by true love’s kiss – a fairy tale default but the actual
phrase invented in Shrek, I think. The curse comes true, thorns wreathe the
castle, but a traveling prince cuts through them, finds the girl and wakes her
with a kiss. Disney embellishes the story in its 1959 animated film, but the
essentials are all there.
It’s easy, perhaps too easy, to find the thoughts and
feelings of the societies which come up with tales like this. The redemptive
power of love is obvious, clearly, and only marginally less so is the superiority
of the man over the woman in terms of capacity for action: Sleeping Beauty
must lie and wait for a man to come. If he doesn’t, there’s nothing she can do
about it. It’s a woman who curses her in the first place – female jealousy is responsible
for women’s problems. It’s a spindle she pricks her finger on: possibly a
comment on women working – only men can rescue them from servitude. Maybe the
spindle is phallic and the princess’s fascination with it can only be cured
by legitimate marriage. Looking at other fairy tales, such themes and ideas
seem to crop up again and again. It’s tempting to say, ‘Oh, come on: it’s just
a story,’ certainly, but how many women save men? How many heroines aren’t
elevated away from servitude to marriage and royalty?
Certainly, Disney must have been feeling this pressure of
the narrative because Maleficent sets out to retell the story, to fill in the
gaps, and demonstrate that, rather than men being the saviours, it is they who
were the problem in the first place. If women are responsible for bad
behaviour, then it is men who made them do it, and – eventually – women will
put it right. Without blowing the plot, it is a young Stefan who is responsible
for Maleficent’s bitterness towards love, an old king who is responsible for
her anger and wish for revenge. Maleficent softens towards Aurora, and… well…
you’ll see…
It is a good film. In parts, it’s a great film. It is, of
course, Jolie’s film entirely. To say that no one else gets a look in is, to a
large degree, to miss the point. The aim of the film, its self-declared aim, is
to fill in her story. She is strident, strong, feisty, funny, enthralling and
heart breaking by turns. The other actors are at their best when they are
adding to her performance (Sam Riley) rather than making their own characters
(Imelda Staunton) but that’s a directorial issue rather that the faults of
the actors themselves. It’s also almost unrelentingly dark in tone – in fact,
the only really jarring moments come when some of the ‘fairyland’ creations
are just too cute or winsome.
Its main strength, though, its retelling of a familiar story
recasting heroes as villains and vice versa, is also its weakness. This film
relies heavily on its dialogue with its predecessor – watching it requires almost
constant lining up and paralleling of content, theme and issue. It’s
fundamentally rather rewarding, but whilst doing it, there’s a nagging doubt
that the film only survives because of it – and, without the earlier Disney
offering, Maleficent is only half a film.
Film information from imdb.com