Snow White and the Huntsman

Please be aware, this review contains spoilers.

The trend for retelling fairy tales in recent years, while popular, has seemed to me to have produced mostly mediocre works that attempt to pull major twists on genre, plot or characterization, and often fall quite short (Beastly, Red Riding Hood, Mirror Mirror, etc. to name a few). Fairy tales focus on the psyche, and use the fantastical to project our own fears, wishes and personalities onto a safe screen to deal with them. Unfortunately, most of the recent re-tellings do not succeed in this. While there have been exceptions to this rule, (for example, Tangled, which I discuss later), for the most part, these films have been focused on glitz and glamor versus a more substantial engagement with the purpose and use of fairy tales. Snow White and the Huntsman is no different in this regard, except for perhaps the number of people that will go see it due to its star power and production budget. As an avid lover of fairy tales, I am unashamed to admit that Snow White was one of the films that I most looked forward to for this summer. Potential for strong female leads, a wonderful looking trailer due to an elaborate and intricate production design, and a strong cast (say what you will about Twilight, anyone who can make Bella Swan remotely human is a good actress), Snow White held a lot of promise. However, it is clear that in the case of this film, once again, all the focus went in to making the film very glossy, and very little went into the actual story. The scripts is one of the worst that I have experienced, with little for Stewart, Theron, and Hemsworth to do, as none of them are given tasks up to their abilities. There are layers hinted at for the characters, particularly Ravenna (the evil queen), and the Huntsman, however they are only hints at dark and torturous, and are left unexplored and un-characterized in favor of detailing the world and its minutia. I am a huge fan of complex story worlds, and perhaps Universal is setting up for a continuing story universe, especially given the way the film draws to a close. However, I found myself completely lacking any interest in the characters, merely because they are not the focus of the story. Snow White, whose main attributes are her innocence and purity (although, lip service is given to her “defiant spirit” in the beginning, is one note and boring, and apparently it is her beauty and goodness alone that inspire all these men to follow her. This leads to one of my main frustrations, because they movie seems very confused about what direction to take with her. She’s innocent and pure, but they also want to dress her in a suit of armor and have her fight in the final battle (and don’t get me started on how heavy that would actually be…especially for a girl who has supposedly been locked in a tower for 10 years). Ok...but pick one! Anyone who has seen or read anything good about female knights (Tamora Pierce's Tortall Universe features some great ones, as does Game of Thrones) knows how much work and effort goes into what is extremely physical, and what would have been considered an extremely unfeminine profession. It's okay if she can magically know how to fight and manage to hold herself upright under plate armor because hey, this means that reductive stereotyping in terms of personality is okay because look, she's been masculinized! See, she's holding a sword! And she's leading these people because...why again? Oh yes, because she's so pure and innocent! She likes wildlife! And she said the Our Father earlier (somewhat confusingly-so, we are in the real world?), so you know she's an angel! But I guess to appease any of those feminist people, she can fight too. See! She isn't only defined by innocence and purity! Except she is, and we are constantly reminded of it, which makes it harder and harder to take her seriously, as she is given virtually no motivation except for her goodness, and the vague mention of her as "the one". I guess she's kind of "plucky" as she has been called, but Stewart is called on to do so little except stand around with tears in her eyes, it's hard to get a sense of the character. Which brings me to the question of the romance. While I love making female characters strong and individualistic, I do admit to sometimes wanting the schloppy romance. This film steers pretty well clear of that, which has pros and cons I think (more later). The writer's start off by giving Stewart and Hemsworth a bit of sexual tension (and I mean, it’s not subtle or anything. He rips her skirt off for heaven’s sake), and completely abandon it once he finds out who she is (perhaps word of her innocence and purity had spread throughout the land? I don’t know). Heaven forbid she be tainted by a little actual sexuality. (Seriously, her first kiss has disastrous consequences). I do admire the aspect of her independence at the end of the film (you’ll see), but that was pretty much the only redeeming thing for her to me. The inconsistencies in her characterization show a lack of a true idea of who these characters are, which adds to a lack of feeling of any sense of connection between any of them. Am I supposed to care about her because she's the embodiment of all that is good? It might have helped if there was a little interaction between the adult Stewart and Theron's characters before the end of the film. I’m guessing there was a love triangle, but it was so poorly developed that I didn’t care at all about it. And the strongest relationship should have been between Snow White and Ravenna. Which brings me to Tangled. The best thing about Tangled was how it got so much right about mother daughter relationships. The original point of the evil stepmother was to allow children who felt angry or did not like aspects about their own mothers to safely displace these emotions onto another figure, who acted as the opposite of the figure of a caring, nurturing mother. (for a great discussion, see Maria Tatar’s The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales). Bruno Bettelheim posited the theory that this allows for a splitting of the mother into a good (and absent) biological mother and an evil stepmother, preventing one from feeling guilty about being angry with one’s own mother. In Tangled, Mother Gothel has cared and nurtured for Rapunzel since she was a baby (does anyone else feel a little sympathy for the fact that she obviously was the one doing all the 3 a.m. feedings?), but in the true spirit of fairy tales, turns out to be an evil monster. I would have liked to see this kind of complexity from Snow White and the Huntsman, instead of a vilification from pretty much the beginning, with very little to humanize Ravenna. Even flashbacks to her past can’t make you empathize with her because she is such a monster.

Also, in brief, as alluded to before, are my issues with the romance of the story (there really almost isn't any). Yes, I like the fact that it stays away from many of the traditioanl pitfalls or teen movies here, but again, it can't decide what to be. Sure, they don't spend time building the romance...so why does Snow White still have to be kissed awake? And gosh darn it, if you try to set up a love triangle, I want there to be at least some heat between love interests. There isn’t any here, mostly because we don’t get many scenes with them actually interacting. I mean, the movie is named Snow White and the Huntsman. They should have more than, I don't know, 5 lines spoken to each other. There is so little dialogue between any of the lovers, that when Hemsworth has a monologue about Snow White, I am left completely unconvinced--not to mention the fact that she is unconscious at this time (SPOILER: except, interestingly, one of his lines is that she reminds him of his wife, who just died, so in this case, she is an interesting rebound case…another element that could have been brought up to complicate the characters, but wasn’t, and still, doesn't point to their connection, but to his and his dead wife's. Still, unconsciousness aside, I guess Snow heard it because of all the tears that leak out once she awakens by his smooch). END SPOILER. Several of the action scenes could have been cut in favor of more development between these characters—I’m thinking specifically of the fight with the troll, who is stopped in its tracks by staring deeply into Snow White’s eyes. Please. Why not cut this, which doesn’t advance the plot or the characterization (yes, I get it, she’s pure and innocent, and will save everyone) and in its place, add some actual human interaction. But I guess when your relationship is built on tears, gorgeous hair and beautiful biceps, who needs conversation? Side note: after seeing the wonderful sequence in Game of Thrones in “Blackwater”, and Tyrion Lannister’s rousing speech of “Those are brave men knocking at that gate. Let’s go kill them!”, Stewart’s overblown and preposterous rallying speech in this film rivaled Elizabeth Swan’s in POTC: At World’s End in terms of laughableness. I almost couldn’t keep a straight face. And when I say almost, I mean couldn’t. That’s right, I laughed. I do want to take a moment however, to mention the production design, which is gorgeous. The costumes are amazing, particularly Ravenna’s. There is wonderful imagery built around her and her connections to ravens (see, she’s named Ravenna, and she’s linked with ravens, which are a bird portending doom in many cultures. Get it? Get it?). The dreary and murky tone of the movie really works well, with brief splashes of color popping out. The CGI is wonderful in places, making textures interesting and creepy, particularly again in the palace of the queen (it is somewhat overdone and cheesy in the spiritualized “sanctuary” where the dwarfs take Snow White and the Huntsman. And I mean, Once Upon a Time cheesy. It doesn’t work here, while it does work in the tv show). However, the dark forest is pretty great, specifically when Snow White accidentally takes a trip on some hallucinogenic mushrooms, and images reminiscent of Disney’s 1937 Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. In addition, much of the action is pretty good. Snow White’s escape from the castle in particular is one of the only really well paced sequences in the film (due in large part, I’m sure, to the lack of gratuitous slow motion in this one section). One of the main characters is also an archer (which I am always a sucker for ever since the Legolas days), and the choreography is very nice in many of the hand to hand combat sequences. The metallic phantom warriors were also quite impressive, and executed well. All in all, not the re-imagining that I was hoping for. Instead of infusing creativity and vitality into an old story, and re-telling it to fit society’s hopes and fears today, we are left with a paltry eye candy piece that wants to be too many mediocre things instead of trying to be one, unified, stunning piece. It had potential, and if you can find a cheap screening, I would see it I guess. Try not to be too disappointed though. If you want a really solid movie version of Snow White (besides Disney's that is), try the 1997 film "Snow White: A Tale of Terror", with Sigourney Weaver, which features far more humanizing characterizations and relationships. Also interestingly for those of you who might like this, (I'm looking at the somewhat more feminist among you), Snow White is not awakened with True Love's first kiss, but by her love interest (well some things don't change), shaking her violently until the piece of apple lodged in her throat gets coughed up. He's shouting "Breathe" at her all the while, and it's quite entertaining. Here's a trailer for it, and I definitely recommend this one. My rating: C+