Kenneth Branagh's CINDERELLA is Weird

For the past decade (longer really), the entertainment industry has been enamored with revisionism. Specifically, it had been enamored by revisionist takes on classic fairytales. Just last year Maleficent and Into the Woods nearly grossed a combined BILLION dollars. Later this year it'll be Joe Wright's Pan, a retelling of, you guessed it, J. M. Barrie's classic Peter Pan that takes to the screen. But for now, we have Kenneth Branagh's latest, Cinderella. 

And it's weird. 

My better half saw the trailer before I did, and immediately she commented on the colors and how the film looked and felt as if it were a throwback to a time where Technicolor ruled. And she was right. In a climate saturated with revisionist takes on just about everything ranging from fairy tales to your grandpa's casually racist stories, Cinderella is a throwback. Something critics and audiences alike are heralding as enchantingly sincere and a tribute to old-fashioned virtues - a reprieve, almost, from the barrage of retellings we've been assaulted with over recent years. But in being a reprieve for some, in being a throwback to classical fairytales and old-fashioned virtues, for others Cinderella also becomes this strange throwback to wrong-headed and outdated gender stereotypes and an argument for the idea that women shouldn't question their situations or trouble anyone with their opinions or feelings.

As we learn early on from Ella's (Lily James, she gets Cinder'd later) dying mother, the mantra here is "Have courage and be kind." On its face, there's nothing at all wrong with that. In fact, as a motto it doubles as something more people in the real world could afford to take to heart and as a reveal of two of the major weapons that characters of all fairytale and fable demographics use to survive - whether it's giving the crazy old beggar at your doorstep shelter in exchange for a rose or helping an injured man on the side of road simply because it's right. The list goes on. And Cinderella is no different. The unfortunate part, though, is that the story and the film use these principles to justify a wish-fulfillment fantasy about a young woman being rescued simply because she handles her miserable, abusive life with obedience and without protest. 

The biggest problem I have with Cinderella is how much her "be kind" mantra really means "be submissive." We're told via narration by Ella's fairy-godmother (Helena Bonham-Carter) that Ella is special because she "sees the world not as it is, but as it could be." And that's a wonderful statement except for the fact that Ella uses her imagination solely to both justify staying in her childhood home and to sustain enough willpower to be politely acquiescent to a step-mother and step-sisters (Cate Blanchett, Holliday Grainger, Sophie McShera) who blatantly despise her. When she is banished from her room to the dusty, cluttered attic, stripped of all her possessions and standing, she simply tells herself that it'll be nice to be somewhere out of the way and that everything's okay because she still gets to live in her parent's home and respect their memory. Through her interpretation of her mother's final wish, Ella teaches herself to accept daily physical and emotional abuse, to expect it as the norm because she believes as a result she is honoring her dead parents. And in doing so, she becomes this strange, almost martyr-like character rather than the hero of her own story. 

Cinderella is supposed to be a story about suffering injustice and then ultimately having that injustice rectified. But Cinderella herself never kicks against the pricks. Not even when she's by herself! Sure, she cries here and there, but most of her time is spent trying to pretend that none of this is happening or that it's okay that it is. But maybe the worst part of the whole thing is that  she won't even try to extend her mother's mantra to other people. She doesn't even considering suggesting her step-mother and step-sister act more kind. No, that would predicate itself on Ella putting herself out there, evaluating their attitudes and judging their actions and personalities. And that wouldn't be kind. It would be courageous, undoubtedly. But it wouldn't be kind. And that part of her mother's mantra is clearly what Ella focuses on. 

If I'm being honest, this overwhelming, celebrated submissiveness might, in some strange way, be more tolerable if it were equal across the board. The problem is that it totally isn't! While Ella is off making and serving breakfast with ash on her face (read: being "kind"), Prince Charming (Richard Madden who, in a bit of nuance, is given the name Kit) takes a similar mantra and decides to actually do something courageous. Unlike Cinderella, Kit refuses to accept his father's command to marry in a way that strengthens their kingdom and instead opens up the ball to everyone in the hopes of finding the intriguing, mysterious girl he met during a stag hunt. Like Ella's early moment with her dying mother, Kit's father too makes a request, reiterating who his son is to marry. But rather than simply accept his father's dying wish, he tells his father that though he loves him, he will not heed his request. And what happens? His father is proud of him! It's this courageous act that finally shows the king that his son will be the perfect heir to the throne. Meanwhile, Cinderella is letting her step-mother verbally tear her to shreds and lock her in the attic. 

We're told Cinderella is special because she sees the world not as it is, but as it could be. And yet, as soon as she is locked away in the dusty, dilapidated attic that she was happy to be in because even though she no longer had any of her possessions or standing in the house, at least she was out of the way, we're blatantly told that she will be happy simply with the memory of her brief time with the prince - that her memories will sustain her as she continues to live her depressing, abused, submissive life with three women who treat her worse than the mud under their expensive shoes. Cinderella is so passive, so utterly devoid of any kind of will or desire for a better life, that she can't even extend a hand to open the window as the prince and his entourage arrive at her home to test the sisters' feet with the glass slipper. No, like the rest of the story, she simply sings and nostalgically remembers the time she danced with the prince to a crowd of a hundred admirers until everything magically works out perfectly - in this case with her mice friends opening the window for her. 

Ella never does anything for herself and yet again and again she is saved. She's saved by her mice friends. She saved by her fairy-godmother. She's saved by the prince. She saved by her circumstances. She's simply saved and all because she's nice. Nice and sweet and passive and submissive and obedient. All while the film whole heartedly nods in approval. 

It's all just so weird.

I get that this film wants to be a throwback. But what it doesn't seem to realize is that without nuance, certain throwbacks come with a carriage full of wrong-headed, offensive luggage. Don't fight back, the film argues. Don't try to change your situation yourself if you're a woman. Because it just isn't want "nice" women do. "Nice" women simply do what they're told and take their abuse with compliance and a warm smile. But don't worry, gals, if you just do what you're told and take your abuse like good little girls and don't talk back, then eventually karma will reward you with a handsome prince to come rescue you and punish those who have wronged you (perhaps by having them confusingly leave forever as commanded by an all-knowing narrator).

In the end, I just don't understand what the point of this movie is. The only real nuance in the film other than Prince Charming having an actual name, is the brief hint at some deeper motivations behind the evil step-mother's actions and behaviors and maybe when Ella first meets the prince in the woods. Other than that, I guess one could point to the almost unbearably too-long ball scene, where Ella seems to come out of her shell and despite apparently not knowing that Kit is a prince, makes a grand entrance followed by immediately dancing with him in the middle of everyone while never questioning why he's wearing white, why everyone's looking or why he has a sword attached to his belt. I could almost see this as a clever nod to Ella knowing more than she lets on, perhaps scheming herself to win the heart of the prince to make it out of her current situation and punish those who have humiliated her. But then she immediately acts dumbfounded when they're alone saying, "Wait, you're the prince, aren't you?!" And there's the whole just being happy with her memories of the evening thing too. There are a plethora of interesting, subversive ways Branagh and company could have gone to make this both an interesting film and an interesting commentary on throwbacks and their often inimical tropes and themes. 

But that just isn't what Cinderella is. It's just a throwback. And in being just a throwback, having no real message turns into a message itself. It's a weird message. An ugly message. A harmful message. Everyone in one form or another has experienced nostalgia. At one point or another, everyone has fondly remembered their past and the way things used to be. As such, it's only natural to want to create throwbacks to properties we loved as children. And often, those throwbacks can be very nice. But unlike what Cinderella would have you believe, sometimes nice isn't something you want to be. 

JUSTIFIED Plays With Our "Trust"

This final season of FX's Justified is, in a few words, pretty freaking incredible. If you haven't caught up with this show, you really need to do yourself a favor. All of the 5 previous seasons are available through Amazon Prime (as well as "methods") and you can catch every episode of Season 6 on FX Networks if you have a cable package with FX included. 

Honestly, besides Season 2, Season 6 maybe end up being, front to back, perhaps the best season of what I believe will be remembered as a classic television series. The way the writers have managed to wrangle everything back in to revolving around the core characters while introducing a few new faces in a way that feels organic and logical, is spectacular. It's back to basics for the final season, and that's exactly what we all wanted and needed to say goodbye to this amazing show. But while this entire season has been amazing and full of unpredictable moments, this past week's episode did something so unexpected that it has thrown everything into question and set up the possibility for almost any outcome, no matter how insane. And despite how shocking what happened was, the way the show did it is almost more exciting and than the act itself.

*SPOILERS FOR SEASON 6 OF "JUSTIFIED" INCOMING! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED! IN BOLD! IN ITALICS! IN CAPITAL LETTERS! AND WITH ASTERISKS!*

Oh, my god, guys! Ava totally shot Boyd in the chest and ran off with that 10 millions dollars! Say whaaaaaaaaaaaat?! Needless to say, the final moments of Season 6's "Trust" were absolutely, shockingly crazy bonkers. But here's the thing. It wouldn't have been really that surprising if Ava had simply pulled the gun on Boyd or even struggled with him and shot him by accident. Clearly in the last few seasons the rift between the two has been forming despite a few patches here and there. It's the fact that she actually pulls the trigger and that she does it without hesitation - as if she had premeditated the entire thing - that makes it so shocking. 

It's shocking because we have faith in what we know about TV tropes. We trust them. We know there's an unspoken code in television, especially television with disproportionately large body counts, that says there is a hierarchy that governs what characters can and cannot do to each other. Simply put, in the world of Justified, Raylan and Boyd can kill each other. And they can kill characters of a lower standing than them. But those characters of lower standing cannot kill Boyd and Raylan. They're sacred. One only meant for the other. And then Ava puts a bullet in Boyd's chest to match the one she put in Bowman's and everything goes flying out the window. 

But it's trust that messes everyone up. Look at Boyd, for instance. He's as confident and as trusting in the hierarchy of Justified as we are! With this episode, it seems Boyd himself has realized that he's the main villain of a popular drama on FX and that none of the people around him really matter. That's why he's so blasé about feeding two of his most loyal henchman to the marshals so that he can head the other way and steal Avery Markham's money. When Ava asks why on Earth he would do such a thing, he simply explains it away - those loyal nincompoops are just the price of going to war with his arch nemesis Raylan Givens. But it's not just that. It's all the little things he does. The way he won't even pretend to be interested in some friendly back and forth with Limehouse. The way he yells at Ava when she won't stop asking questions. Boyd Crowder trusts so much in his status as the Angel Eyes to Raylan's the Man with No Name that everyone else is basically off his radar. And that trust is exactly what brings him down. But Boyd isn't the only one in the episode afflicted with illusions of trusteur. 

Take Wynn Duffy and poor, stupid Mikey. Jonathan Kowalsky has done a great job at slowly seeding in Mikey's anguish after finding out his boss is a rat. But Mikey's not going to do anything. We know how TV works. Wynn Duffy is one of the immortal ones. He's one of those characters that no matter what situation he's confronted with, he finds a way to slither and slink his way out of it. And Duffy knows it too! That's why he's so nonchalant and dismissive in the face of Mikey's threats. He knows he's safe. He knows that affably dumb Mikey isn't going to do anything. Like us, he trusts that everything is going to work out like it always does. And then Mikey knocks him out, handcuffs him to his RV table and puts a call into Katherine Hale. By trusting what he had always seen to be true, Duffy never even considered his henchman's feelings or motivations. He simply trusted things to work out like they always have and like us, it left him shocked (and unlike us, unconscious and handcuffed to a table).

And then there's Boon - Avery Markham's replacement for his corpsified commandos, a pale, wild-eyed gunslinger who fancies himself the fastest gun around and who looks like he cuts his own hair and glues on his mustache every morning. In the fourth to last episode of a series' final season, there are a few things seasoned viewers trust not to happen. And of those things is devoting a large chunk of screen time to a character we only met a few weeks prior. And yet there we found ourselves, watching as Boon cryptically threatened that unsuspecting hipster diner employee and lamented that his girl Loretta might not like him anymore after he, you know, shot her great-aunt to death in her own living room. It's an extremely weird scene to plop down in the middle of one of the final episodes of Justified ever, one that undoubtedly left a lot of viewers wondering what the h was going on. That is until we look at it in light of Ava shooting Boyd. 

Now everything's up for grabs. Now anyone of any character standing can be taken out by anyone else. Could Boon actually be the Jack McCall to take out Raylan's Wild Bill? Because this episode so blatantly violates all of the rules and restrictions Justified has established over the years, because this episode so blatantly violates our trust, anything is now possible. We're the true victims of trust in this episode. Or are we winners?

One of my favorite things in movies and in television is when the writers use their most knowledgable fans' intelligence against them. You most often see it in horror movies, but occasionally there will be a lucky moment when it happens in television - the most tropey entertainment there is - and any time it happens like it did this past week on Justified it's amazing. 

There's this episode of a show Penn & Teller did where a magician uses performers the cups and balls trick for Teller. The magician knows that Teller knows the trick. Three balls and three cups, one ball under each cup. There's some shuffling some magic then he asks how many balls in each cup. And the magician knows that Teller will say the opposite of what he should say to make the magician look good - Teller knows there are three balls under the middle cup because that's the trick, but a layman would say there's still one under each cup just like there were at the start. And what happens? Teller says what a layman would say and as the magician pulls back the cups... one ball under each. The magician used all of Teller's knowledge as a magician himself to completely take him in. That's what Justfied is doing for it's fans. It's taking our knowledge of television, our faith and trust in the medium and using it to shock us, surprise us and completely take us in. 

In a clip after the cups and balls trick, Teller explains that to use someone's knowledge of something to completely fool them like that is the greatest thing one magician can do for another. And, as Justified showed up with "Trust," it also just happens to be the greatest thing a TV show can do for its audience. 

Raising the Dead: Review of WHAT WE DO IN THE SHADOWS

Between Only Lovers Left Alive, A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night and now Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's What We Do in the Shadows, the vampire genre, having been slowly drained of vitality throughout the past decade and seemingly staked once and for all by the Twilight series, seems to have risen from the dead (along with some long ass titles.) 

However, unlike its brothers in arms (or fangs, teehee), What We Do in the Shadows thrives on the fact that the genre has been done to death - a fact that should appeal to hardcore horror fans. What We Do in the Shadows, a Christopher Guest meets The Real World mockumentary about a group of vampires sharing a flat in Wellington, New Zealand, realizes just how exhausted the genre is and doesn't feel the need to spice things up with sparkles or synthetic blood or parasitic worms or some other insane twist. There's no reinvention here. It's all back to basics. An affectionate spoof of the entire vampire mythology that works not only as a terrific comedy, but as a pretty great vampire movie too. 

It's easy to see what the film is doing and what notes it's hitting - there's Viago (Waititi), the rich dandy vampire ala Interview with the Vampire, there's Vladislav (Clement), a sex-obsessed Romanian warrior type ala Vlad the Impaler/Bram Stoker's Dracula, and the 8000 year old Petyr (Ben Fransham), a Count Orlok lookalike ala Nosferatu, among others. But unlike the lazy, unfunny vampire parodies of recent memory, What We Do in the Shadows is not simply doing reference jokes. It's abundantly clear that Waititi and Clement have immense love and respect for horror and the vampire genre and are simply getting back to all the things they love about it. 

What is truly brilliant about What We Do in the Shadows is how it juxtaposes the extraordinary with the mundane. Here you have these centuries old beings of immense supernatural power who have flat meetings, a chore wheel, and complain about how one of them hasn't done the bloody dishes in five years. There's so much to love here and so much comedic gold gets mined out of simply placing these lavish, extravagant bloodsuckers in a boring, run-down, nowhere part of town. What they're doing is nefarious, but it's also pretty monotonous. 

What We Do in the Shadows is funny from beginning to end. But what's also so amazing about it is just how layered it is. It's jokes are lighthearted and charming on the surface, but they stick with you. The characters are silly caricatures, but they're also deeply compelling and richly complex the more you think about them. And then there's what may be the film's greatest strength, it's lore, which intermingles centuries upon centuries of vampire history (and decades upon decade of vampire movies) in a way that feels unique, creating jokes organically out of this intermingling rather than at its expense. 

It's doesn't hurt that the casting is completely inspired, using a plethora of insanely talented actors to create a world and mythos that feels natural and lived in. Besides the four main flat-mates, there's the recently turned Nick (Cori Gonzalez-Macuer), a scuzzy, frat-boy type who goes around parading his newly minted vampire status and brooding about his inability to eat french fries anymore; there's Jackie (Jackie Van Beek), one of the vampires' worn-down, hilariously mistreated familiar who spends her time finding victims and performing menial chores in the hopes of being turned; and there's Anton (Rhys Darby), who heads a rival pack of werewolves and is obsessed with appearances above all else. Just casting the terrifically pale and timid Darby as the pack's alpha male is funny enough, but his constant reminder to his pack that "We're werewolves, not swearwolves" is easily one of the funniest recurring gags I've seen in quite some time. 

Many people will probably criticize What We Do in the Shadows for not having more bite than it does (figuratively speaking). However, it is the film's uncompromising geniality (even during the most intense and heartbreaking scenes)that makes it so wonderful. Waitiki's undeniable sweetness and the film's deadpan nature (reminiscent of the pair's work on Flight of the Conchords) is what anchors the film. And their love for the genre makes What We Do in the Shadows infinitely rewatchable, with characters, jokes, and scenes worth revisiting again and again to see how they grow and to try and spot all of the tiny, hilarious details you might have missed. 

8 out of 10