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When the movie swept its breeze into Malaysian theaters, it stormed up a good amount of movie-goers and many thumbs. It was a good week, considering it was already well in to the school holidays in our local calendars; kids with their parents would be there lining up, eager to watch that ice-cool (enough puns) hliday movie. As usual, good movie marketing strategy, people of Disney.
Since it was the end of my final week for the whole semester, I was able to catch on the movie wave by hitching onto Zach's (mybrother) class plan to watch the movie together at a near GSC cinema down at Paradigm.
Initially, I had a thought of the movie as another typical Disney flick recently (not including Wreck-it-ralph or Tangled, they're good); maybe a stereotypical Princess and romance stuff, with maybe cheesy sidekicks and you know what. Even the main character (Anna) looks almost like Rapunzel, but slapped with orange hair. But after having a blast through the whole movie, I almost forgotten how Disney had been putting effort on their recent productions.Maybe with John Lasseter and some great people on board, their production has been growing really well.
Essentially it is a movie centered on love; the relationship of two sisters. The romance theme is not the deep points of the movie. I won't delve deeper on the story. Basically, Elsa has a rough past, due to her powers. And since then Anna and her aren't close because of that. The prophecy became true when Elsa ran away and let out her full powers in their later years. And Anna has to go and see her sister to stop the seemingly endless winter that has befallen in their kingdom.
BEGINNING
Elsa and Anna is depicted with a very simple and nice childhood, only that Elsa is depicted with a strange powers that is of unknown origin. The idea of the crew putting in Olaf at the beginning, appearing as a snowman they built as children was splendid. Because as they brought him up again as a real character during the duration of the movie, he becomes a very apparent symbol representing Anna & Elsa's childhood, depicting their bond and links. Elsa also created Olaf without realizing, again shows how she still holds her childhood with Anna.
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| Belong to its respective artist, not mine. |
-Childhood-
With an unforseen accident, both of them can no longer become close. This part of the story was very deep due to their parents separating Elsa and Anna from each other and kept the castle's door shut. The parents wanted to give their children the best or solving their children's issues in this scenario, but in this case, it just caused more problems that affected Elsa's life. And when things could not get any worse, their parents got caught in a storm at the sea and thus died. Things in this section depicts how life can be just very cruel; and even though as parents would do for their children, sometimes it just doesn't actually work out for their children's lives. And the problem can't be fixed when they are not there for their children, which is very much a sad scenario.
-Anna and Elsa in the Coronation Part-
Later on, 3 years has passed since the passing of their parents. The coronation allowed the kingdom to open its gates once more and Anna sees this as an opportunity; or a wonderful feeling to explore and mingle with other people since she was alone the whole time without Elsa being by her side; whereas Elsa on the other hand, who has been influenced so deeply not to come in contact with people, viewed it as some sort of burden, or what I see it as fear and worriedness, due to what people will see her as (her powers). She was depicted very lonely and quiet, whereas Anna has become quite a lively and ackward girl.
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| Belong to its respective artist,not mine |
Anna, since she wasn't able to explore beyond the castle's doors (or what the film has showed us in scenes), has that naivety in her. So, with her and Hans(the Prince) wanting to marry immediately in a day of seeing each other (maybe after some song sequence), something is going wrong in here. And near ending of the story, when she needs the kiss from him, that's when Hans showed his true face, intentionally marry her just for wanting to get the throne. From here, the crew were able to tell the audience how true love at first sight doesn't truly translate well into our generation, and you don't get to actually marry a stranger straight away after meeting her/him. This kinda beats up the the old-era films of Disney, which has many themes surrounding the call of " love at first sight".
For most of us, it was a nice twist when that happened, since it was very unnoticeable in the beginning, not much hints on Prince Hans being the real bad guy. When that came into question, Kristoff, the male lead, became her "hidden/unrealized" love.
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| "Frozen" Concept Art © Disney |
-Love as Sisters-
At the ending, we see Anna at a crossroad of her decision:
It was either she goes towards Kristoff and have her true love's kiss and break the curse or...
go towards Elsa and protect her, since she is about to be killed by Hans, but ending up freezing herself up as the curse's spell completes itself.
In that tense moment, she chose a very selfless decision and decided to protect her sister from Hans. She freezes and manages to stop Hans from killing Elsa. Elsa becomes affected by her sister's sacrifice and cries for her, at the same time, the winter storm stops. At this time, Anna turns back from being frozen and Elsa realizes that it was love that was the answer to controlling her powers. Okay, love might not be a good answer to certain problem in real life, but in most films, it's a nice dream-like ideal. But let's get away from the obvious for a moment.
In this scenario, we see that love wasn't directed at typical couple's relationship but rather the close bonds with both sisters. Something that I have to applaud to the people behind this movie for making this Disney flick essentially not like those core romantic flicks.
MUSIC
A classical broadway-style, but taken in a modern contemporary approach, with new twist and lyrics which serves this time of era. The talented songwriters team(husband & wife) Robert Lopez and Kristen Anderson-Lopez, compose the music what's fits for Indina Menzel's strong voice and Kristen Bell's talented bubbly voice. A total they have made 8 songs, great discussion with the directors on musical parts of the movie.They manage to made songs that not just essentially a music, but to tell a story that rhymes and touches each of the character's emotional standing on their view of life in different moments. 'Let It Go' which was sung by Indina Menzel, the character Elsa which portrays her insecurities and finally how she releases her frustration of all the years of isolation by holding in her powers and concealing from others and test her powers and so ends up building an ice castle. 'For The First Time' sung by Kristen Bell, the character Anna shows her longing for connection of the outside world and love and eventually mash-up with Elsa singing of her fears, 'In Summer' which had a nice play on humor of a naive snowman's dream of how he would do in summer. The intro of the film which opens with an epic choir of a tribal folk of the South Saami yoik "Eatnemen Vuelie" (the Earth's yoik) by Frode Fjellheim. It gets you to the core when you listen to it, knowing you're just about to begin to watch a great epic Disney film, getting goosebumps all over when you first hear it. The music were excellent to their degree, it has made a name for Disney's film history since Alan Menken of great composed musics of those times. There are some music score I have not mentioned, so I recommend you go listen to all the music themselves. They are all so good, you're going to listen them on repeat foreverrr!
Summary...
All in all, the film was pretty good with their tropes. A good mix of comedy and issues addressed for the audiences, it was overall a very well-made film for this generation of viewers. I cannot compare the old Renaissance films for that matter because of the generation gap, but still it might be as good as the old but as they say, old things have to make way for new things to take its place. I'll be looking forward for their next upcoming movie.
-Luke
Tuesday, 10 Dec 2013
