Review: Cinderella (2015)

It's Halloween, which means I should be writing about scary stories of some description – but instead I caught up with last year's Cinderella. Enjoy my interminable nit-picking.

Remember 2015, that halcyon age which bore a seemingly endless bounty of enjoyable and interesting female characters? There were warriors and scavengers and princesses and spies, and most if not all were the protagonists of their own stories, with agency and drive and complexity.

Cinderella was one of these heroines, and though she didn't make quite as big a splash as the likes of Rey or Imperator Furiosa, she was (and always has been) noteworthy for being the poster child for goodness and kindness; two qualities that are difficult to depict on-screen, if they're ever considered important enough to depict at all.

Here is a female character that does no martial arts, sword fighting or other forms of ass-kicking across the course of her story; if she has any sort of special skill it's simply the ability to persevere in the face of domestic abuse. That's it: that's her story. At worst it can be described as a very patriarchal tale about a girl who goes from the loving arms of her father to the loving arms of her husband, with an unpleasant stint in-between involving lots of housekeeping and women being complete bitches to her.

But for many people it's the story of escaping an abusive home without compromising your own goodness – admittedly with a little wish-fulfilment thrown in. After all, Cinderella marries a prince, not the delivery boy. (Unless you're reading Ella's Big Chance by Shirley Hughes, which you really should because it's adorable and delightful).

The fact this story been adapted so many times over is a testament to how popular it is, so it's hardly a surprise that it was among the first of Disney's recent influx of live-action adaptations of their animated canon. Now join me as I pick it apart!

According to Wikipedia, there have been over fifty filmic adaptations of Cinderella, and that's not counting her appearance in things such as Into the Woods or Faerie Tale Theatre or Once Upon a Time. Given that there are so many variations and retellings of the tale, from Cinderelmo to Pretty Woman to Babette Cole's Prince Cinders, it's crucially important that if you're going to make another version of Cinderella, you have to bring something new to the table.

As it happens, Kenneth Branagh's Cinderella has three innovations to call its own: an unashamedly bright colour palette, an extended prologue that portrays Cinderella's relationship with her mother as well as her father, and a brief sequence in which the fairy godmother puts Cinderella through a Secret Test of Character by disguising herself as an old peddler and begging for food and drink.

Some may point to Cinderella meeting the Prince in the forest before the ball takes place as an original addition, though most adaptations take the opportunity to stage a pre-ball meeting between them (with Disney's animated version being the glaring exception). The usual constant is that one or both of them will be in disguise, and so initially unrecognizable at the ball.

The new prologue detailing Cinderella's pre-tragedy family life is full-on Glurge, which involves Hayley Atwell as Cinderella's mum becoming so overwhelmed with love and happiness that she drops dead after five minutes (seriously, if the doctor had said: "she's dying of happiness" I wouldn't have been surprised).

For the most part, keeping Cinderella's mother alive for longer and exploring her relationship with her father feels like padding (having no animal hijinks or musical numbers to help fill out the run-time) though I suppose it could justify how Cinderella remains untouched by the cruelty of her stepfamily: not only did she have an idyllic childhood in which she was loved unconditionally, but suffered her parents' loss so deeply that becoming a servant in her own home is nothing in comparison.

Yes, in this time of subverted, deconstructed or otherwise fractured fairytales, from Shrek to Maleficent to Wicked to Enchanted to Burton's Alice in Wonderland – even Frozen to a certain extent – perhaps this Cinderella is original simply by being wholly sincere about what it's doing, with not so much as a cynical wink at the audience. Cinderella is goodness and innocence personified, Lady Tremaine doesn't get a tragic backstory to justify her cruelty, and (perhaps the most shocking of all) Prince Charming is legitimately charming.

Yet for all that, the movie still doesn't bring anything particularly new to the story of Cinderella. Perhaps that's not a surprise given the multitude of adaptions that have come before it or the fact it's toted as a remake of an already existing Cinderella, but it's still something of a disappointment.

As it happens, I was raised on Disney's Cinderella, as well as Ever After, the 1997 version of Roger and Hammerstein's musical (the one with Brandy), and Gail Carson Levine's Ella Enchanted (the book, not the terrible movie) – and I think all of them make for better adaptations than this one, simply because each makes a clear attempt to change our perception of the story in some way, either through music, casting, context or understanding of what the story actually means.

This Cinderella does assign itself a specific theme in the form of Cinderella's mother's dying words to her daughter, encouraging her to adopt them as her mantra: "have courage and be kind." Branagh is on record for saying he wanted to portray simple kindness as a superpower; something that not only defines Cinderella but sustains her through life's hardships, and it's a vision to be lauded and embraced. Kindness has always been an underrated quality, in fictional characters and in real life, but anyone who has been the recipient of it knows how important it is.

Problem is, there's a difference between a great idea and the application of that idea. In this case, a lot of it has to do with the murky area that lies between definitions of "good" and "nice." The truth is that any asshole can be nice if they want to. It's the lowest bar you can set for yourself. Things like manners and decency and basic awareness of others are important, even essential, but they're hardly out of the ordinary.

Two nice people being nice to each other.

When it comes to compassion and courage and goodness – those qualities are much harder to find in real life, and even more difficult to portray on-screen. For reasons that could fill several years' worth of speculation and theorizing, the portrayal of kindness, innocence and gentleness in fiction often runs the risk of making a character look like a doormat or an insipid twit. Sometimes both.

(It's even more difficult when writing female characters, which are usually expected to be nice/kind anyway. There's always more gushing over a male character doing something unselfish than when a female does something similar, as being good and kind and self-sacrificing is considered their default setting).

Occasionally an actress is good enough to avoid the simpering qualities that often go hand-in-hand with goodness: Angel Coulby in Merlin managed to avoid it by infusing Guinevere with down-to-earthiness, and Mia Sara's Princess Lili in Legend had a bratty streak that offset her purity. But more often than not you end up with Emilie de Ravin's Belle, a character written and performed as a complete nitwit, whose innocence is translated as naivety, and whose goodness is sacrificed on the altar of Being A Giant Pushover.

Portrait of a bland doormat, who is also kinda bored.

(I may still be a little bitter that Once Upon a Time ruined my favourite Disney Princess).

So how do various Cinderellas handle the challenge of being deeply good/kind/innocent without coming across as insipid or moronic? As ever, the trick is in the "show don't tell rule", though it requires that both writer and actress understand the difference between "niceness" and "kindness". Namely that niceness is easy, but kindness – real kindness – involves some degree of risk, since it fundamentally involves offering a piece of yourself to another person.

In demonstrating the kindness and courage of its heroine, the best example comes from Danielle in Ever After, whose attempt to free an indentured servant from being shipped to the Americas involves a) offering up her own money to release him, b) subterfuge and disguise, c) standing up to a verbally abusive jailer, and d) great personal risk to herself, it being established that impersonating a highborn lady is a punishable offence.

The kindness of Disney's animated Cinderella is established through her relationship with the household mice, for whom she makes clothes and assigns names. It's a little bit of a cheat since the mice (and birds, and dog, and horse) are largely anthropomorphised, but it means we see Cinderella in the role of guardian, protector and mother to the most vulnerable creatures in her vicinity.

It seems to be a widely accepted criticism that the mice shenanigans take up too much screen-time in the animated film, but I think they're important for two reasons: not only in demonstrating Cinderella's profound loneliness, but giving us the chance to see her portrayed through a secondary point-of-view. That so many self-aware creatures go to such huge lengths to help her out is a confirmation of her worthiness.

Cinderella being nice AND helpful at the same time. 

Across this movie, Lily James's character does a lot of nice things, but nothing that comes across as exceptionally gracious, especially compared to her forbearers. Here the mice are just mice, and Cinderella has no noteworthy relationships with anyone outside the house (there is a servant girl she briefly meets with in the market, but it has nothing of the weight Paulette and Louise have in Danielle's life in Ever After). As such, we have no other sympathetic characters upon which she can bestow her love and kindness.

Though I suppose you could point to one of the film's genuine innovations as an example of Cinderella's renowned compassion; that of the Angel Unaware role the fairy godmother plays when approaching Cinderella for the first time. But even this left me a little dissatisfied. The "old beggar woman" asks for some food, and Cinderella immediately complies, fetching her milk at no great cost to herself. It's not kindness or goodness, it's just NICENESS. COMMON HUMAN DECENCY. One of the stepsisters probably would have done as much, if not just to get the old woman off their property.

If only the meeting had been framed as a real moral choice; like if Cinderella had to choose between fixing up her mother's dress for the ball or tending to a sick old woman. Or if she brought the old peddler into the house, knowing that her stepmother would punish her if she found out. Or if the peddler was rude and difficult, but clearly in need of assistance anyway.

Alternatively, they could have added a bit of suspense to the meeting by floating the possibility that Cinderella won't help the old woman (and therefore won't benefit from her magical intervention). That's the other thing missing from this Cinderella: a sense of fallibility that's usually derived from the character's ability to push back against her stepfamily. 

This is something most other Cinderellas – Danielle, Disney, Brandy, Ella Enchanted – do on numerous occasions, from Disney's dignified assertion that "[the invitation] says every eligible maiden is to attend," to Ella stealing her stepsister's wig as she runs away from finishing school, to Danielle flat-out attacking Marguerite when she's finally pushed too far.

This Cinderella unfortunately comes across as a pushover, perhaps best exemplified when she offers to give up her bedroom to her squabbling stepsisters, and then do nothing when her stepmother seizes on the opportunity to relocate her to the attic. There's not another, smaller bedroom in the house that Cinderella can move into? She can't put her foot down and refuse to live in the freaking attic? What makes this even weirder is that Cinderella's father is still alive at this point, making it extremely bizarre that she would just go along with her stepmother's plan to shove her up twelve flights of stairs.

The point I'm trying to make is that in most adaptations Cinderella has a breaking point; a scene (either big or small) in which she stands up to her abusers and is (either immediately or soon after) viciously shut down. It's purpose is fundamentally in making her seem human – capable of voicing the injustice of her situation or losing her temper or finally feeling beaten by her stepfamily, and in most cases it comes when she's denied admittance to the ball.

In the Disney version, which also features Cinderella doing up her mother's dress in the hopes of wearing it to the ball, there's a pretty intense scene in which the stepsisters rip her outfit to shreds on realizing it's been made with discarded pieces of their own wardrobes. And when I say "intense," I really mean intense. I've seen it likened to a rape scene, and that's a fair assessment of how it's visualized. When Cinderella runs out to the garden in tears, it's as much because she's just been physically assaulted as it is the fact she can't go to the ball.

Yet here, the same scene plays out in an incredibly tame manner – just a few tugs and torn stitches, and it's over with. Sure Cinderella is upset, but in my exceedingly long-winded way, the argument I'm trying to make here is that by the time she flees to the garden to meet her disguised fairy godmother, she's not exactly in the depths of despair.

It COULD have played out differently, with Cinderella (like her predecessors at one point or another) finally fed up with the world, reaching her dark night of the soul, giving up on her mother's last words and being tempted to turn the old beggar woman away. After all, where has her mother's motto ever gotten her? It would have been fascinating, not to mention suspenseful, to have her falter just a little before inevitably changing her mind and doing the right thing.

And what about the second part of the "kindness and courage" mantra? Again, there's really nothing here that shows Cinderella being brave. The logical scene to depict this is naturally her arrival at the ball, but though she tells her lizard footman that she feels nervous, she enters the palace with complete composure and confidence.

Again, compare this to Danielle, who has to whisper "just breathe" to herself, or Disney, which magnificently and wordlessly conveys the sheer amount of nerve Cinderella must have to enter the ball by herself:

***

To make a long story short, it's not that this take on Cinderella is bad, it's just that dozens of other adaptations have already done the story better, not just in its entirety but all the little scenes that make up its whole. This Cinderella offers her forgiveness to Lady Tremaine on leaving her house (though it's somewhat dampened by the fact she's being whisked off to the palace; again this Cinderella loses nothing by being gracious), but I preferred Danielle's quiet: "after this moment I am going to forget you and never think about you again," to Lady Rodmilla.

Here Cinderella's race away from the palace is staged as a chase scene, and yet there's no urgency to it – not even when the carriage nearly topples over a cliff edge. In the Disney version you want Cinderella to escape, but you also feel Grand Duke's panic as he tries to catch her, knowing that it'll be his head on the chopping block if she gets away. Either way you're on the edge of your seat.

Towards the end of this film they try to add a few new twists, but again – they've been done better elsewhere. Who really cares that the Grand Duke wants to marry the Prince off to another princess? Or that Lady Tremaine finds out about it? Or that they hatch a plan to ... I forget. Keep Cinderella out of the way? Her stepmother somehow finds Cinderella's glass slipper and destroys it, but I infinitely prefer the Disney version in which she trips up the palace servant and smashes the slipper, leading to Cinderella's moment of triumph: "but you see – I have the other slipper." (I looked this scene up on YouTube after writing about it, and it's still damn awesome).

Like I said, if you're going to tell a story for the umpteenth time; do something interesting with it.

Miscellaneous Observations:

The cast is strong, and in some cases even inspired – Cate Blanchett as Lady Tremaine and Helena Bonham Carter as the Fairy Godmother? That's spot on, though they're never allowed to fully unleash. I imagine it would have been extremely tempting for them to start chewing on the scenery (after all, they're in a pantomime) and yet Branagh keeps any theatrical flourishes in check.

Likewise, Holliday Grainger and Sophie McShera are surprisingly funny as Cinderella's stepsisters: the Bitchy One and the Stupid one respectively. Richard Madden is playing a more PG-friendly version of Robb Stark, Stellan Skarsgård is just picking up his paycheck for the Grand Duke, and for the second time in as many years, Nonso Anozie is playing the black manservant to a rich white dude (and come to think of it, is the movie's only original character).

As for Cinderella herself, Lily James is ... fine. Just fine. I thought she was quite good in War and Peace, but so far she hasn't really had the chance to demonstrate much range in the characters she's played: Natasha and Rose and Cinderella are all essentially the same person, and I expect the same can be said of her Elizabeth Bennett in Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, regardless of the gore and sword-fighting.

What I find most interesting to ponder is what Jessica Brown Findlay thinks of her, considering Rose McClare replaced Sybil Crawley on Downton Abbey after Jessica departed in pursuit of a Hollywood career – only for her Lily James to nab it instead. You have to admire the irony.

There are some feeble attempts to plug some plot-holes in the original fairytale, though they end up backfiring. First the movie provides justification for why Cinderella doesn't just leave her stepfamily (she doesn't want to leave the house where her parents lived) though other versions usually make the most of the fact that Cinderella literally has nowhere else to go to underscore her helplessness.

Later the Fairy Godmother puts a spell over Cinderella's face to ensure that her stepmother doesn't recognize her at the ball, though this actually removes some of the suspense considering her stepfamily's presence at the ball is always an underlying danger that Cinderella has to avoid. (Though I've no idea why it's never occurred to anyone to just make it a masquerade ball).

The pumpkin coach's trappings are made out of the greenhouse, which is a reasonably neat idea. But later the film misses the perfect opportunity for someone to look out of the window and say: "didn't we have a greenhouse?"

I appreciated that this time around the Prince actually goes with the Grand Duke to find the owner of the glass slipper – other versions have him skimp on this duty, and it always reflects badly on him.

"Thanks for coming to find me."
"No problem. So far this wedding is going much better than the last one I attended."

Given that this adaptation was short on fresh material, it's a shame they didn't draw on the Brothers Grimm and incorporate the grave of Cinderella's mother and the birds who visit it, which as far as I know has never been visualized on-screen before. Especially since they did include Cinderella's request for her father to bring back the first branch that touches him on his journey, which (in Aschenputtel) is planted on her mother's grave, grows into a tree, and provides her with the dresses she wears to the balls at the palace.

Dang it Disney, there was tons of cool material you could have played around with. Though I'll give you a pass for ignoring the bit where the stepsisters mutilate their feet in order to fit the glass slipper, or where they eventually get their eyes pecked out by birds.

I liked the reoccurring butterfly motif, seen particularly in one of the gifts given to Cinderella by her father and the details on her ball gown; it's used as a surprisingly subtle symbol of transformation.

The film gets a few points for ensuring that the extras are not simply a sea of white faces, though the only non-white faces of note are a rejected princess and the aforementioned manservant Nonso Anozie. Apparently Adetomiwa Edun (Elyan from Merlin) was in this as a "trooper", but I couldn't spot him.

Long story short, my verdict is this: Cinderella isn't a bad movie, just one that it's been done better by at least six other versions.