The Beauty and the Beast might have been interpreted in the media multiple times, the French take on it in the movie back from 2014 adapts the more classic version at the beginning of the story. The bankrupt ship owner, the family that has to leave their house.. As you can guess their ships drowned.
The sudden re-appearance of the last ship, the re-ignition of hope to live a better life, demand from the daughters for new dresses and new rouge (the youngest asks for a rose) and the sheer disappointment when it becomes evident that the ship's been arrested and their family won't get a thing from it.
Because along with daughters there are also three sons, one of them comes along with the father of the family to the city, but knowing that their attempts are futile, he disappears into the unknown. In search for his son the father meets some questionable characters, you can guess that someone has to play the role of the bad guy and this is our bad guy :) On the run from the city the father loses his way and happens to meet the Beast's castle. And I must say, the CGI group gave it a full feeling of a fairy tale. I usually call such a picture "busy", since there are multiple elements, even if you know that part of them are made with the help of the computer, but the overall feeling it creates feels like a photo manipulation.
Let's continue. Like in the classic version the father spent the time, was well-fed and by the end he was presented with riches that had gowns and rouge that his two daughters demanded. He takes them away, but on the way he notices the huge overgrown mass of roses and he picks up one, which alarms the beast and he demands life for a rose. Not a fair deal tbh, but he's a beast and his claws are sharp. The father has no other way but say goodbye to his children. But among the mess Belle dashes out and no one can stop her replacing her father.
Really liked the scene with those winter bushes and the forest itself. It really looked magical. When she passes them, she is met with an oasis among the frost and winter, an eternal spring.
The gardens and grounds of the castle are overgrown with roses (beautiful sight tbh).
No one is there to meet her, but she intuitively follows the lead and enters what is to be her bedroom. Again they made it look very fairy-like.
Although she shivers in her nervousness she meets the Beast and asks to deal with her if she is to meet her end in this castle. Instead he justs asks her to dine.
The days pass by, the style of this movie is as if someone really told you a fairy tale, well, basically it is happens like that, a mother reads this story to her two children (though it is obvious who is the mother and those two kids).
Days pass by and Belle has a dream, dream of the past and unknown couple, a beautiful lady and the prince, whose obsession was to haunt the golden doe. She asks him to stop.
Belle had several dreams and they were to convey what happened in this castle and the story of the Beast, who exactly cursed him.
It was the prince himself and his obsession with the golden doe that angered the fairy god, the golden doe was none other than the woman he loved and he killed her with his own hands. She is a fairy, you see, and her father's wrath could not be lessened by her plea to spare him. He was turned into the Beast before he could find a woman who could truly fall in love with him and break the curse. His friends were turned into giants that guarded the castle. The one in the screenshot above is one of them.
Belle lived in the castle, but she could not love the Beast and one day she followed to his pricate quarters. This is the moment when she witnessed him in his most primitive form, chewing down on a prey. Scared, Belle runs away, away from this place before she is chased after.
It would look cooler and this ambiguous moment would have worked better, if you had no idea that he just dined on a fine boar.
By this time I also had another point that started to bother me. And that is.. I understand that Vincent Cassel is good actor, but choosing him for the role of prince was a stretch for me. I know he's not young, in '14 he was already almost 50. So I have no idea why they haven't found someone a bit younger. Many of the actors actually were on the older side. Léa Seydoux was also almost 30 when the movie was made. So it's kind of Beauty and the Beast in a true sense. Léa looked amazing, having that blonde hair and her skin is pale with that pink blush, she looked amazig.. well, compared to that senior citizen.
By the end of the movie, I honestly couldn't stop my inner dialogue about that dusty guy. It was apparent that there is no young and handsome man waiting for her, there is only Vincent Cassel.
I trailed off a lot.
In the movie this episode breaks the existing tension between the two.
She also calls for his human heart to allow her a visit to her family. He allows it, but with a condition, she must return in a set priod of time.
The gambling brother (otherwise why he'd be chased by those thugs) finds that his sister is now full of precious gems. She couldn't find it anywhere else, but in the Beast's castle. He sells the news to the ones he owes money. So you can guess it's the final part. The thugs make the castle a mess, they steal and ruin. Happy to be suddenly so rich they don't realize the danger, the awakening of the stone giants. And the Beast among them.
In the final confrontation the Beast is gravely wounded by the very same golden arrow the Prince killed the golden doe, it was found by Astrid, the fortune-teller and the lover to the boss of this gang. No one escapes the stone giants. Trying to help, all three of Belle's brothers who came along follow her lead to the magic pool in her room, which could allow him to heal. But what healed him and broke the curse was her confession that she loved him.
And the pension appears in his entire glory. Maybe I wasn't too impressed by his hairy chest.
This is a happy end for her and him.
As you can guess the tale is over, it was told by Belle herself and the two kids who listened are her kids, they continue to live in the village instead of the castle or city like commoners.
I must say.. as a beautiful fairy tale it works, it is short, concise, but if you want to see some depth of how they fell in love, don't even think about it, since it doesn't exist. So I am not surprised it might not have great reviews in general. Because for a fine fairy tale it is too ambiguous, I don't say it has nudity, but something for an older audience it seems too shallow. But it's really pretty to me, the cgi work is inspiring :)
No comments:
Post a Comment