Ever since a cowboy doll named Woody stood up and started walking and talking around Andy’s room, Pixar has asked us to believe.
They want us to believe there are still monsters in our closets, and that superheroes are living amongst us just like everybody else.
They’ve asked us to relate to a rat who aspires to be a chef in a French restaurant, and they’ve even asked to believe a curmudgeonly old man with a heart ready to burst could fly his house to South America carried by balloons.
But this time, with their Scottish, girl power, fairytale "Brave," Pixar has asked us something even more shocking. They asked us to believe in magic. And it’s through this magic, that this adventurous and sweet-natured film mines its biggest surprises and its biggest heart.
Set in ancient Scotland, during a time of warring clans and arranged marriages, Princess Merida (voiced by Kelly Macdonald) is not your typical princess. With her mane of manic red hair as wild as she is, she traipses about the kingdom bow at the ready practicing her target shooting, climbing mountains, and or riding her black horse Angus trying to find as much adventure as she can get her hands on. She’s never worried about being ladylike.
That is…until she gets home.
As soon as she walks into the castle, she’s quickly inundated by the ever-watchful, ever-present voice of her mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson). Elinor’s trying to raise her daughter as a well-born princess; she instructs her on proper attire, table manners, and of course, how to be presentable for an eventual husband. When the eldest sons of the other clans are brought to compete for her Merida’s hand in marriage, she’s obviously none too pleased.
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So Merida, impetuous and lost for any other ideas, goes deep into the woods, has a spell performed by a dotty old witch to help change her mother and ultimately her fate. Mother and daughter are thrust in a race against time before everything is irrecoverably changed forever.
Pixar’s commitment to technical achievement still remains their benchmark no matter the story they’re telling. The environment they’ve created has layers and layers of foliage, stones, and dark pathways that hint at the potential danger behind every corner but also potential adventure. Patrick Doyle, a native Scot, seems to be having great fun with the score; half traditional Scottish music, half beautiful string melodies.
More than any technical wizardry though, the story and in particular the relationship between Princess Merida and her mother grounds the movie with both psychological intelligence and true emotion. Disney, throughout their films, has had no shortage of young motherless heroines. Merida is different. She’s not Ariel or Belle who are trying to make their way in the world without a mother’s influence. She’s not Cinderella or Snow White where their one female influence is trying to kill them, She HAS a mother.
It’s a real mother/daughter relationship full of all the awkward miscommunications, differing viewpoints, and mistaken meanings that lead to epic fights. They could easily be modern women fighting over not liking the new boyfriend or the right to use the car. They just happen to fighting over magic spells and arranged marriages. There are scenes between these women that will make you cringe with authenticity.
“She doesn’t understand me.”
“Why doesn’t she see my side?”
It’s through the use of the magic and the wonder of this ancient Scottish world that illuminate this complexity especially within the family. These are people that live and die by the alliances they create. They have to band together whether it’s an angry bear storming the castle or a magic spell.
I wish the other characters were as well-shaded as these women. The king a lovable brute in a bear skin cape and thick red beard is a great comic relief, but then you wonder….he’s in charge? The other clansmen are equally doltish, and eventually you wish they’d just age a couple centuries and learn to read already.
It takes the ramifications of the spell for the both ladies to come to realization they’re learning for from each other in unexpected ways. It's because the relationship is so psychologically astute the action and drama of the film's climax feel all the more intense. The stakes have been raised just that much more.
Ultimately Pixar is much like the character it's created in Merida. Despite all the intentions in the world of avoiding listening to the parent, it has. It has taken the best traits of the magical world of the Disney feature and helped rework them in something that feels entirely of Pixar's doing. And in that, they are all the braver. Grade: A-
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