Director:
Alfonso Cuarón
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| Cinderella!!! |
Sara Crewe (Liesel Matthews) is forced to leave her beloved India after her father (Liam Cunningham) enlists to fight for the British in WWI. He moves Sara to New York to attend the same boarding school as her late mother attended, in hopes she would have the utmost care. Sara's creativity and kind-nature soon lead her and the head-mistress Miss Minchin (Eleanor Bron) to clash. As Sara continues to struggle staying true to herself and trying to follow the stifling rules of Miss Minchin, tragedy strikes. Now Sara must find away to believe in her dreams, while dealing with the harsh realities of the cold, cruel world.
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| What do these girls even talk about? "Oh I like your green dress!" "Your's too!" |
I kinda made this movie sound more depressing than it is. Sorry. It's really not! It's actually an amazingly positive and sweet movie! This movie is so ingrained in my childhood memories, it's right up there with Wizard of Oz, Sleeping Beauty and Steel Magnolias (Yes, Steel Magnolias was one of my favorite movies as a child, we'll talk about it later.). I would watch this movie over and over. It's very much a modern fairy-tale, except it takes place in 1914, so it's not that modern.
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| Someone's wearing their fancy-pants today. |
I got HBO last weekend as some special new year promotion, and I saw this was coming on. I hadn't seen it in YEARS. It's probably been a good ten years, which is surprising considering I have two much younger sisters, but they were so into Hannah Montana and High School Musical shit, I guess this masterpiece somehow fell through the cracks for them. Anyway, I decided to watch it, but I was a little scared that I wouldn't be able to make it all the way through. You know how you re-visit a childhood movie or cartoon and it makes you cringe SO BAD and you hate yourself for ever liking it in the first place? That's happened to me a few times (Ahem, Ed, Edd and Eddy), but with this movie it wasn't the case.
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| How did her father know to dress her like that? I mean, I know he's British but... still. |
I LOVED IT! It made remember being a kid again! I always wanted to be a little princess like Sara Crewe! Looking at it as an adult, I can so appreciate this movie for what it is now. The costumes, the set design, the lighting, the script, the acting... everything is just perfect. It's one of these rare movies you come across that just work. The directing is absolutely superb. I looked up Alfonso Cuarón and saw that along with this movie, he's also directed Great Expectations (1998) and Children of Men. I'm not in the least bit surprised. Though this movie is a intended for children and has a whimsical, almost dream-like vibe to it, it's still very dark and stylized. The green hues and drab, muted earth tones that come into play after Sara moves to New York, starkly contrast the world she once knew in India, where the film opened. This really helps us see things through Sara's eyes, and helps us relate to her. Little things like changing the color scheme is such a nice touch in a movie like this. Alfonso Cuarón did something very similar things in Great Expectations.
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| "I have to fight a war now, I'm just gonna leave you hear with the weird bitch lady. PEACE!" |
Now lets address the elephant in the room. The story. It's messed up. In case you haven't seen the movie, SPOILER ALERT! Sara's father is presumed dead and she's left alone in the world. Not only is Sara's father taken from her, but the British government seizes all his wealth and property. WHAT? Is this for real? After a man signs up to help YOU fight in a vicious war and "dies" you're going to take all his shit and peace out leaving his little girl, the only family he has, NOTHING?!?! 1914 ethics were FUCKED! I never understood that part as a child. I was always very worried about the financial situations of my fictional characters when I was young. To me, a happy ending = money, fame, marriage or all three.
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| Someone "Arms of an Angel" these children! |
Watching this movie again as an adult, I still found myself feeling HORRIBLE for Sara. Not only did she lose the only person she had in the world, she also lost all of her assets. Miss Minchin, supposedly being in a financial rut because of Sara, takes almost everything she has and forces her to move to the attic and work as a servant girl. It's very Cinderella. Despite everything, Sara never gives up on her fantasies and imagination. She still believes everything will turn out for the best, despite what Miss Minchen preaches at her. This movie may very well be why I was (and still am) kinda delusional and imaginative sometimes.
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| What a fucking bitch! |
The acting was spot-on. I haven't really seen any of the actors in this film in anything else that I know of, but they were all great! I have to give a special shout-out to Liesel Matthews. She was incredible! She played the President's daughter in Air Force One along side Harrison Ford, but after that she seemed to disappear. It turns out, Liesel's real name is Liesel Pritzker Simmons and she's an heiress to the Hyatt Hotel fortune. When she was a teenager, she found out that her father's relatives were secretly swindling money from her and her brother, Matthew (Where she got her stage last name.). Liesel hired a lawyer and sued them for her and her brother's rightful inheritance. It was an ugly battle. It was found out that the family memeber Liesel sued were actually stealing her inheritance and dividing up the money amongst themselves. Under the settlement, Liesel and Matthew each received roughly U.S. $280 million in cash and were given more control over other trusts valued at about U.S. $170 million each. Liesel now does charity work in Africa along with her husband, and dabbles in business. I'm happy for Liesel and her charitable projects, but I feel like she would be one of the top actresses in Hollywood today if she had stuck to it.
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| Guuurl! You gonna get pneumonia! That's dangerous in 1914! |
I know that was not really a part of the movie, but I thought I would share it because it's super interesting. Anyway, the movie is awesome, and if you haven't seen it... what's wrong with you? Go watch it! This cynical, negative world we live in these days, really gets me down sometimes, so this movie was perfect for me to re-visit. The movie teaches that magic is real, and that real magic is within all of us. Those who believe in magic will find it, and those who follow their dreams and stay true to themselves will have their happy ending.
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| some little boys are too... just sayin'. |
For more information, click here.
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| I'm just gonna say it: black women pull off hats better. That's not racist, it's SCIENCE! |
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