“Maleficent”
This is, I believe, the first review I ever wrote, long before I considered starting a blog. You’ll notice disparities between my current writing and the writing found in this early work. I hope the difference reflects well, if not on me, at least on your judiciousness.
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| The regal Angelina Jolie, grabbing attention and holding it with a firmer grasp than the all-share holds over a coke addict |
In Maleficent, Disney’s new
live-action release, the 1959 classic Sleeping Beauty gets the “Wicked
treatment”, in which the well known tale is told from the perspective of
its villain, providing a back story to explain her malice and inviting us to
sympathise with someone we’ve been taught to distrust and despise. Unlike Wicked,
however, Maleficent does not act as a parallel to its source, but is a
re-telling, shifting the “good” and “bad” sides and giving an entirely
different conclusion to the story.
If any of the early Disney classics were to
be chosen for adaptation into a contemporary 3D CGI-laden blockbuster, Sleeping
Beauty might just be the best choice. Often hailed as one of Walt’s best,
it features magnificent stylised designs by the painter Eyving Earle, also the
film’s art designer, giving it a truly unique look, a lush score by George
Bruns, based on Tchaikovsky’s music for the ballet, moments of grandeur and one
of the most menacing villains in the canon. It was also the first to be
photographed and released in the 70mm-widescreen format and the last fairytale
adaptation by the studio until The Little Mermaid, 30 years later, long
after Walt Disney’s death. The visuals of this film, stunningly rendered by the
photography crew and effects artists, don’t look like a photo-real copy of
Earle’s gorgeous paintings, but rather like another rendition of the same
universe. The forest has the same charming quaintness and calmness in its
isolation from the castle, which has the same medieval austerity, though this
time with a harsher atmosphere about it because of the people who inhabit it.
The director, Robert Stromberg, was production designer on Avatar and Alice
in Wonderland, and this film takes place in another rich dreamscape, though
it’s a little less superbly bizarre than Avatar or Alice