Snowed under: 8 notes on Snow White and the Huntsman
1) As I walked out of the cineplex late Friday night after watching the 10:15 showing of Snow White and the Huntsman, I wondered . . . what was the last decent film that I've seen by Universal Pictures? Huntsman consists of a jaw-droppingly disparate mixture of bizarre casting, pretentious dialogue ("You have travelled far--with a great burden"), and a disjointed committee-written storyline that keeps stopping dead as it cuts back and forth between Snow (Kristen Stewart wandering about various magical lands) and the evil queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) as she rages and/or ages rapidly (or not. I got confused by the transitions between aging makeup) in her castle. 2) As a fan of Charlize Theron, I was okay with the movie until it cut to dirty Cinderella-esque Kristen Stewart starting a fire with two rocks in the castle's north tower. She's supposed to be the put-upon "innocent" emblem of "purity," but I just saw her lose her virtue to a vampire in a much ballyhooed bed-breaking scene in Twilight Saga: Eclipse, so stomaching her as Snow White was nigh impossible.
3) Eventually Stewart resembles Juliet, Joan of Arc, and Greta Garbo in Queen Christina (1933), so I can see why she chose the role, but not why the filmmakers gave it to her. At one point (minor spoiler alert), both the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth) and some guy named William compete for her love, so I immediately jotted down "Team Thor" and "Team William" in my notes. Will Stewart ever live down her Twilight associations?
4) I did see Mirror Mirror back in March, and found it pretty but harmlessly forgettable as Julia Roberts tried too hard to be a funny and likable evil queen. That movie kept finding reasons to show off Armie Hammer's (Prince Alcott's) muscular chest, but the movie's light jokey tone did not mesh well with the more serious aspects (i.e. the starving villagers) of the fairy tale.
5) The corresponding hunk in this film, the huntsman of Snow, proves to be a rabble-rousing drunk corralled by the evil Queen to retrieve Snow from the Dark Forest. A blank drunk he remains. I couldn't see why he's mentioned in the title, or what he's doing in the film except to look handsome backlit by the flames of a nocturnal fishing village set afire by the Queen's henchmen. He wields an axe much as Thor wields a hammer. He gets to kiss Snow later on, so I guess that's something.6) For much of the latter half of the movie, all I could think of was Monty Python's Holy Grail (1975) and the Cate Blanchett-riding-on-a-horse-into-battle scene in the 2010 Robin Hood.
7) When the dwarves finally appeared, I wondered how the filmmakers got such major actors (a blind miniature Tiresias Bob Hoskins (!), Ian McShane, Nick Frost, and Toby Jones (I just saw him in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy!)) to appear altitudinally challenged. When Snow sees some holy deer in a magical fairy-land scene, Hoskins says "No one's ever seen this before" as everyone gazes dewy-eyed at all the benign and twinkling CGI. When Hoskins realizes that he's in Snow's presence, he says "She is life itself. She will heal the land. She is THE ONE. Where she leads, I follow. She will bring an end to the darkness." Perhaps so, but Mirror Mirror's Snow played by Lily Collins was better cast, in part because I've never seen her before. No one behind Snow White and the Huntsman seems all that concerned with any of the actors' over-familiarity.
Comments
And yet, on some sub-frequency, the trailers are broadcasting a warning: The investment in over-the-top CGI, and Charlize Theron walking out of a vat of crepes mix, makes me wonder what lack of film-craft the producers are trying to compensate for.
I've been fooled too many times by Hollywood hype, and my instincts tell me to wait for this to come out on Netflix several years from now.
But, I trust the Doctor. If there is a reason to ignore my instincts and plop down a sawbuck to see this thing on the big-advertisement screen, just say the word.
http://www.stlmag.com/Blogs/Look-Listen/June-2012/Review-Snow-White-and-The-Huntsman/
- Maurice Mitchell
The Geek Twins | Film Sketchr
@thegeektwins | @mauricem1972
Theron was good but jarring at times as she strained the wrath bit. Love her intonation of "Mirror, mirror ..."
Stewart. I thought she was right fetchiing in her armor or sprawled in the snow. But maybe that's because I'm getting old. You got to love how she scowls under her forehead or you gotta leave her.
Loved the fairy tale prologue, but then, if this is a fairy tale, how come Snow says the Our Father? That didn't seen to fit.
Liked the Dark Forest.
Apropos of your filmmaking teaching, I had a very smart and motivated 8th grade section that was obsessed with The Hunger Games books. So, we took time out of our film history unit and adapted and shot our own Hunger Games movie covering the whole games sequence.
Yes, I'm on break too. I didn't teach a video production class this spring, but I did try out a movie evaluation essay assignment, and largely it went well. I especially enjoyed getting student reactions to Pauline Kael's review of Bonnie and Clyde. Some said that her analysis of that film was of the best they read in the class (they begged to differ, however, with her low opinion of Return of the Jedi).
Your students shot the violent scenes of The Hunger Games?
Last night, we rewatched Alien on DVD. Such crude special effects! But the straightforward storyline appeals to me much more than the murky plot shifts of Prometheus.
I worried about doing the violence in The Hunger Games but I was ready to argue that we were just adapting what is accepted as classic YA literature. We were discreet. The only blood was on Rue's shirt. The most violent part ended up being Thresh hitting Clove with the rock. I created a very convincing splatter sound effect by smashing a rock on a towel soaked with water.
Academically, I'm wondering how we can formalize the many internet possibilities (as seen in the film blogging world) as part of class instruction. I'm still just beginning to think that way.
Its biggest fault, indeed, is a horrendous screenplay that, yeah, feels written by committee. It's a collection of scenes, each of which function OK in their moment, but none of which really stitch together to build a theme or develop characters.
Case in point: At the end of the movie, Snow gives the ubiquitous "who's with me?" speech to the troops. Of course, everyone is in, and her huntsman not-quite-boyfriend drops to his knee with a smirk on his face that says, "Look how she's matured into a leader ..." Except, well, she's basically a leader the whole time. There's nothing cute about her speech because she spends the entire movie wanting to deliver it and pleading for help to have the chance.
That's one example, of course. There are many, many others -- some in terms of character development (or lack thereof) and some in terms of tone. Often one scene plays quasi-"realistically," and the next will play like a campy cartoon. Neither approach is wrong, but the back and forth creates whiplash at best and snickers at worst.
I was surprised at how much I didn't mind K-Stew in the role, but I was irked that her younger self had rather distracting freckles that didn't seem right, and I struggled to imagine the scenario(s) in which the life-imprisoned Snow was fitted for body-hugging gowns to wear as she got older. ("Sure, this dress is going to get sooty and mangled in about 24 hours, but we like our prisoners dressed like proper ladies.")