A few weeks back, I wrote about the shift in perspective our culture has taken; that is, that our narrative point-of-view is with the outcasts and the "others." The Atlantic article I cited flew to absurd heights when the writer lamented The Terminator's lack of sympathy for Skynet, the computer determined to wipe out all humans.
Maleficent--Disney's reworking of Sleeping Beauty--has the same attitude; the first three minutes makes a clear distinction between the wonderful, magical kingdom of the "Moors" (not moor-like in the least, or is there a hint of pre-Reconquista nostalgia?) and that of the horrible, all-male world of the humans. Make no mistake, they are called "humans," rather than by the name of their kingdom or whatever, and, like all humans, they wish to conquer the Moors for no good reason. The usual human bloodlust, I guess.
Adding to the outsider sympathy, Maleficent herself, when in her powerful glory, looks awfully Luciferian with her horns and enormous wings topped with claws. I suppose they had to square the circle to make a villain into a hero, but it left me saying, "Look, I don't want to become an Illuminati conspiracy theorist but you're making it really hard not to."
Aside from the asinine perspective, it really is a bad movie. It's one of those Hollywood products that was obviously chopped down to the bare minimum; things happen with no explanation, no doubt left on the cutting room floor.
Even the bad reviews praise Angelina Jolie's performance but I just don't see it. All she did was stand around, sometimes with a small smile, sometimes with with a frown, and talk in that irritating British accent she used in Tomb Raider. She barely interacts with any other characters and it looks like she could have filmed her scenes in three days. In my opinion, she's one of the most overrated actresses around and her beauty has dried into freakishness--the Lady Gaga-style faux cheekbones don't help.
It's all too stupid to talk about. Every change to the Sleeping Beauty story is made arbitrarily just to be different or anti-human. The effects are ugly and unimpressive. The climax is the most hackneyed action-movie trope: Maleficent is in a position to kill the evil king but she releases him. She turns her back and, like all humans, he attacks her from behind. She defends herself and he falls off the tower.
My girlfriend, who is no critic and loves the story of Sleeping Beauty, kept saying, "Why?" and concluded, "Who is this movie for?"
This film also reminded me of the Reconquista that took place in Spain after the Umayyad Conquest in 711 until the fall of Granada in 1492. Most notably the banners which were almost exactly like that of Castilla y Leon and then of course the Kingdom of the Moors, which is what the Spanish Christians and the rest of Europe called those Muslims who resided in Al-Andalus and North Africa. King Henry also reminded me of King Henry IV of Castilla y Leon who was not a great leader and weak but did start an offensive war against the Emirate of Granada, similar to the film.
ReplyDeleteThanks for chiming in. I was not aware of those parallels. I just thought that, of all the names they could have given the magical kingdom, they picked "The Moors," when there was nothing Scottish or moor-like about the setting.
ReplyDeleteIt seems that there is no enemy of Western Civilization that Hollywood won't sympathize with. Next up, a view of the bubonic plague written from the microbes' point of view. All they wanted was a place to raise their families!