Brave, Pixar's most recent film, follows the adventures of the Scottish princess Merida, whose imminent betrothal drives her to a drastic attempt to break out of the fate imposed on her by society and by her mother, Queen Elinor. Because this is a primarily literary blog, I'm going to focus mostly on the plot and other elements that most directly affect the story. That said, the best way to summarize my opinion is to say that everything except the plot was nearly flawless. The animation, voice acting, music, and other elements I probably didn't notice all came together to make it a beautiful piece of cinema; that's unmistakable. It's a much bigger task to sort out the point of what actually happens.
Before seeing the movie, I had a plot predicted in my head. It was Brave as I would have written it, shaped by all the preview footage I had seen. In it, Merida begins as a stereotypical Disney princess: beautiful and strong-willed, but forced into a marriage she doesn't want. But she's made of sterner stuff than most Disney princesses, and rather than having her change handed to her by a ridiculous prince, she strikes a Faustian bargain with an evil witch, knowing full well that it will upset her kingdom, but not caring. Somehow her family is turned into bears, as the previews indicated, and the repercussions aren't as easy to face as she had anticipated. The climax of the movie would involve Merida, now having gained the knowledge of the consequences of her various actions, would learn to set aside her personal desires for the good of the kingdom. This could have involved a marriage, but preferably there would have been some other integral element.
The actual plot is much more haywire. To begin with, Merida is a lot more clueless than I had expected. In fact, she's downright idiotic. I'm aware that she's a teenager, but I think most of my high school class could have anticipated that, perhaps, the pastry brewed by the magical bear-themed villain might have something to do with turning the person who eats it into a bear! Lots of fairy tales involve hubris, but usually it's not nearly this specific or predictable. Many other parts of the film, including Merida's speech to the clan leaders, showed a similar pandering and lack of creativity. Pixar isn't usually a company that dumbs down its movies for a child audience, but I'm afraid that's what happened here.
Merida's parents, Queen Elinor and King Fergus, were very well done, and I especially enjoyed the Queen's personality when she becomes a bear. This middle part of the movie held me the most. Merida is aware of the damage she's done and is actively trying to repair it, and she and her mother are bonding in a creative way. It greatly helps this part that Elinor occasionally becomes "a bear on the inside, too," so that there's less silliness and more urgency.
The resolution was the sloppiest part. Things stop making sense in the last five minutes, after Mor'du dies. If legends are lessons, then the giant bear was the only thing keeping a sense of sanity tucked into this movie.
First: Merida completely forgets about the words the witch gave her to break the spell. If that was a message and not an incantation, it should not have been phrased that way, because it left the tapestry bit feeling like a cop-out.
Then she doesn't have to marry anybody, and all the clans go home happy. This means that there are no consequences, or in other words, that if you're angry about your betrothal, you can publicly humiliate your family by turning half of them into fuzzy animals and tricking your parents into trying to rend each other limb from limb. They will forgive you for everything, and all of your political allies will be too confused by the deus ex machina to remember why they sailed into the movie in the first place.
In the parting shot of the movie, one of our blue will-o-th'-wisp friends waves just to remind the audience that we have no idea of his motives. I guess this could be symbolic, but I'm not totally convinced.
There are plenty of core elements of this film that I enjoyed. The biggest one is that the plot is not driven by the machinations of a significant villain. This is true of fairy tales: the hero wanders into wacky events and leaves them having grown, as we do in real life. It was also primarily driven by women, which, though not intrinsically better in itself, is too lacking in the film world. And, of course, it was quite an adventure to watch, even while I remained skeptical of some of the plot devices. Even what I thought was flawed was enjoyable at the same time. I'd recommend this movie to anybody, as long as you're not looking for the same kind of moral weight Pixar put into Wall-E.
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