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Just have to add my huzzah! to this film and score. I've developed vertigo this year, so can't see films in the theater without serious dizziness and nausea (especially waltzing! for heaven's sake), so I had to wait for home video to catch up. But bought the blu ray unseen because I trust Branagh and still love the Disney animated version.
It was just as good as I had hoped. And Doyle's score, as others have noted, is wonderfully and often subtly pitched to the action. So much so that I was on the verge of tears something like eighteen times through the film, and each heartbreaking moment felt exactly right without a trace of maudlin manipulation.
I want to make special mention of Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother. The film (and Ella) were so generous to the character - helping us understand her motivations and the despair behind her eyes - that I found their final moment together wonderfully cathartic. It was beautifully done, and the music was pitched perfectly through their every exchange, so that it transcended the usual villainy.
I've barely listened to the score though I bought it last Spring since I wanted to wait till I saw the movie, to come on it fresh. So glad I did. I've been tiring of film score listening lately, preferring other things mostly, but this is something I'll spend a LOT of time with now that I've seen the film.
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Posted: |
Sep 21, 2015 - 11:14 AM
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By: |
edwzoomom
(Member)
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Just have to add my huzzah! to this film and score. I've developed vertigo this year, so can't see films in the theater without serious dizziness and nausea (especially waltzing! for heaven's sake), so I had to wait for home video to catch up. But bought the blu ray unseen because I trust Branagh and still love the Disney animated version.
It was just as good as I had hoped. And Doyle's score, as others have noted, is wonderfully and often subtly pitched to the action. So much so that I was on the verge of tears something like eighteen times through the film, and each heartbreaking moment felt exactly right without a trace of maudlin manipulation.
I want to make special mention of Cate Blanchett as the wicked stepmother. The film (and Ella) were so generous to the character - helping us understand her motivations and the despair behind her eyes - that I found their final moment together wonderfully cathartic. It was beautifully done, and the music was pitched perfectly through their every exchange, so that it transcended the usual villainy.
I've barely listened to the score though I bought it last Spring since I wanted to wait till I saw the movie, to come on it fresh. So glad I did. I've been tiring of film score listening lately, preferring other things mostly, but this is something I'll spend a LOT of time with now that I've seen the film.
So glad you finally had a chance to watch this movie and experience the total bliss of the film and the score. What a wonderful review and I second every word.
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Thanks, Edwina.
A couple more thoughts, the first a MINOR SPOILER SO SKIP THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET.
What a great bit of stagecraft to smash the glass slipper. Somehow I could sense that was going to happen when I first saw the slippers - but it was still a terrific moment of theater in the movie. I love Branagh's theatrical sensibility - really works in a show like this.
And here's what I really love about Cinderella, that I did not think about in my adult years until my daughter came along when I was 37. A story like this can be called too simple, too pat, too focused on beauty and filling traditional societal roles, too much about how marrying the prince means living happily ever after. But that was not my take on this film at all. It's a perfect distillation of key truths about life in the midst of simple fairytale conventions. It's about how life is both happy and terrible, and one can follow the other before you take another breath. It's about the inevitability of loss (epitomized by loss of parents) and there is no escaping it, not even with magic.
And most of all it is about our ability to choose how we live our life, how we respond to joy and adversity. Ella's ability to follow her mother's advice - "Have courage and be kind" - made her life better, just as her stepmother's bitterness and despair made her life so much worse.
You can call this message trite (and maybe there was a time when I would have said just that). But it seems to me that "have courage and be kind" is as good a philosophy of living as I've heard of in a long, long time. So if a simple Disney retread can have this kind of impact, than there really is hope for movies as a force of good in the world - more than a source of entertainment and revenue.
Especially when it comes with such a great score! 
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