In a land where fairies flit around enchanted forests, giant deer have magic trees growing out their heads and the preferred mode of travel involves exploding into a swarm of birds, it is surprising (and unfortunate) that they still have not invented botox. Deprived of plastic surgery, the statuesque Queen Ravenna (Charlize Theron) opts for a more organic option of youth serum: sucking the life from virgins and munching on the hearts of baby birds.
Meanwhile, having escaped the clutches of her Stepmother armed with a rusty nail and on the back of a white horse she found on a deserted beach, Snow White (Kristen Stewart) finds herself in the Dark Forest. She promptly falls into a patch of magic mushrooms, inhales some spores and embarks on a hard-core acid trip where monstrous insects creep over her flesh and shadowy figures encircle her twitching body.
Essentially, we’re not in Disneyland anymore.
Snow White and The Huntsman is an intriguing reinvention of the classic fairy tale; more of a gothic horror straight from the pages of the Brothers Grimm than a bedtime story for toddlers. In a bold leap from shooting TV adverts to his first Hollywood blockbuster, director Rupert Sanders has created a visually stunning landscape peppered with VFX that serve to enhance rather than overpower the drama. However, as Ravenna so aptly proves, beauty is only skin deep and Snow White ultimately lacks a depth to match its shiny exterior.
A prime example of this would be the dwarves. Clever visual editing shrinks the likes of Ray Winstone and Ian McShane to believable bite size, but their screen-time is equally curtailed. With a tangled web of awkward plot devices and surplus characters (suddenly we have eight dwarves, not seven) there simply isn’t enough space in the already prolonged 127minute for the motley crew and their quips. It feels like screenwriters Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock and Hossein Amini suffered from a chronic case of “loose end” syndrome, where the subplots hampered rather than complimented the narrative thread. Characters and relationships are never fully revolved, bunching together into tangled mass at the end where the film abruptly ends and Florence and the Machine’s dulcet tones take over in an attempt to appease the volley of popcorn being hurled angrily at the cinema screen.
Saying that, Queen Ravenna’s backstory is one of the film’s greatest strengths. Her proto-feminist lust for vengeance allows Theron to evolve her character into a complex antagonist with a substantial amount of psychological scarring. A clever twist of the script insinuates that the golden man that oozes from her mirror is an imaginary fragment from her broken mind – a fascinating convolution that ascribes an element of humanity to a character that could easily become the cartoonish archetype of pure evil (thank you Disney). Combined with her serpentine physicality and the simmering malice that drips from her every word, Theron is beautifully menacing and the true star of the film. Kristen Stewart as Snow White delivers a very measured performance, but ultimately is unconvincing in projecting the inherent nobility of the Princess. Instead she spends the majority of the film arranging her features into varying expressions of agape bewilderment, as if she has already been tricked into eating the poisoned apple and can’t figure out what that strange taste in her mouth could be.
With its bold imagination, stunning visuals and intriguing idiosyncrasies Snow White and The Huntsman is a film that comes so close to perfection but is ultimately let down by an overly-ambitious narrative. The lack of chemistry between Snow and the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth, armed with an extremely dodgy Scottish accent) is a real weakness, exacerbated by the largely redundant love triangle thrown in alongside Prince Charming (Sam Claflin). As a directorial debut, it is a credit to Sanders, but a more experienced director would perhaps have been more equipped to circumvent the swathe of action and focus on the relationships that bind a film together.
Still, this is a film with a lot of heart (pardon the pun) and with rumours of a second instalment, Sanders could potentially revise these flaws in another script. Clearly, in Hollywood it’s not so much a case of “Once upon a time” but “twice upon a sequel”.
Bloody brilliant review!