[9.2/10] There’s a combination of changing norms and the joy of snark that causes us to look back on our childhood favorites with mild mockery. For Disney princesses in particular, it’s easy to poke fun at tropes or story choices that reflect a very different era. And on top of making fun, there’s room for genuine concern about the sort of implicit lessons even classic films impart to the kids watching them.
So there’s reason to be wry or even wary about returning to *Beauty and the Beast*, the 1991 classic from Walt Disney Animation Studios, despite its place the first animated film to ever be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. There’s room to be concerned that the message to little kids, especially young women, is “put up with romantic partners who treat you poorly, because they probably have a heart of gold.” And there’s a place for criticisms of the film as a paean to Stockholm Syndrome.
But revisiting the film, not as the cultural signifier it’s become in the past decades, but as a living, breathing piece of art, reminds you not only what an artistic achievement the film was and is, but also of how it address and subverts the very social criticisms that have stuck to in the years since its release.
The film focuses on Belle, a young woman in provincial France who loves to read and dreams of living a life of adventure like the ones in her story. When her father Maurice, the local eccentric inventor, stumbles into the castle of a prince cursed to look like a beast for his unkindness and superficiality to a wandering enchantment, he’s imprisoned there. An attempted rescue turns into a prisoner exchange, where Belle agrees to take her father’s place, slowly bristles with but comes to know the Beast, while the collateral damage-cursed staff of the manor hopes she might be the one to bring true love and break the spell and make them human again.
It’s a fairly traditional storybook kind of tale from Disney, one that later films like *Shrek* in particular would satirize and even deconstruct a bit. But what sets *Beauty of and the Beast* is how well it earns every plot and character choice in the fairytale setting, rather than relying on convenience or fiat.
The film establishes Belle’s love for and protectiveness over her father as a defining character trait, one likely borne and reinforced of the scorn he receives in their community, which drives her willingness to take his place and her pull back home. The Beast, internalizing his own self-hate and feeling of hideous otherness, projects it onto others and is still overcoming is spoiled youth all these years later. Hell, even Gaston, the pompous, rock-headed local hunter, has plausible, internally-consistent reasons for wanting to marry Belle -- he thinks they’re the two prettiest people in town and thus the laws of nature dictate that they should be together.
Therein lies the core theme of the film. It’s easy to poke fun at the film’s “real beauty is one the inside” moral, but it dramatizes that idea exquisitely. There’s obviously the Beast himself, whose treating a seemingly haggard old woman poorly because of her appearance earns him this curse and teaches him, in harsh but effective terms, what that approach (and its opposite) gets you. There’s his foil in Gaston, the man who is dashing and square-jawed on the outside, but rotten, dumb, self-absorbed, and prejudiced on the inside. And of course there’s Belle herself who is, true to her name, a beauty, but who doesn't live up to the community’s expectations for beautiful women and so finds herself a curiosity, ones who yearns to find a person she can really talk to rather than just another pretty face. The lesson may be trite, but it’s laudable, and the way that *Beauty and the Beast* bounces these characters off of one another to teach it is superb.
And that’s all before you get to the things that make these sorts of Disney Renaissance films so delightful, and not just admirable in their message and impressive in their story sense. For a film so dead set against any notion of superficiality, *Beauty in the Beast* is absolutely gorgeous in terms of its design and animation. From the autumn landscapes the film opens with, to the maze of quaint homes and shops in Belle’s village that become covered in snow, to the haunting and then luminous castle that becomes the main setting of the film, you’ll gawk with awe at each new setting and backdrop.
The design team crafted characters who fit that world. with Belle herself who fits the “princess-in-waiting next door” look but in a way that tones down some of Disney’s traditional excesses in that archetype, the Beast who is in turn menacing and vulnerable in his stature and body language, to the ludicrously-proportioned Gaston who is pompous masculinity personified, the main figures in this tale have designs that fit with what they represent in the story. And the remaining cast -- both human and household object -- bend and move and squish with charming flair.
Those side characters help keep the proceedings light and keep a smile on your face (and occasionally tug at your heartstrings) even when the story’s getting heavy. The Bert and Ernie routine of Lumiere and Cogsworth, the clock and candelabra twosome who bring the laughs, try to ease Belle, and coach up their master, are a consistent highlight. Angela Lansbury brings her genteel warmth to Mrs. Potts (with her pandering but effective little boy, Chip). And even the sycophantic LeFou has a certain endearing quality in his henchman buffoonery with Gaston.
Of course, no Disney Renaissance film would be complete without songs, and *Beauty and the Beast* doesn't skimp on them. The showcase number, “Be Our Guest” is the most classic tune in the bunch, a rousing number that starts slow and builds and builds and builds to a stunning crescendo. Gaston’s villain song is a just as fun tribute and introduction to both the character and the misguided rationales behind his place at the top of the food chain. And the opening “Little Town” number does a great job of both establishing Belle and the setting in one fell swoop.
And all of those rollicking, well-written tunes are accompanied by that era’s standard but no less striking animation. The bending, bulging flatware that somehow puts on a big broadway show of a meal for Belle populates a superlative and creative sequence. The buzzing ecosystem of Belle’s “little town” conveys movement and clockwork humor in the opening scene. And even the crossover hit-fashioned title tune sports some of the earliest and most prominent use of computer animation, there to help make the budding romance between Belle and the Beast seem all the more sweeping and majestic.
Still, what marks that romance as more than just a Disney flick inevitablity, or a regrettable retrograde result, is how *Beauty and the Beast* takes the time to earn and does the legwork to earn it. Yes, the Beast is, at best, a jerk to both Belle and her father, but rather than him suddenly having a change of heart while he falls in love, it takes constant reminders and encouragement and the threat of being stuck this way forever to make the Beast change his ways. It’s not some easily-gained or simple switch, it’s a strong change in personality, motivated by (admittedly self-interested) people encouraging him to be better.
And Belle herself doesn't just suddenly accept the Beast’s crap. The thing that softens their relationship and keeps Belle from just bolting on him is the way he risks his life to save her, something that shows there’s decency within him. But even then, she’s not suddenly fawning over him, and even when she’s tending to his wounds, she calls him on his crap. The film not only dramatizes why Belle would give Beast the slightest chance to be a decent guy after how he starts, but shows her and Lumiere/Cogsworth/Mrs. Potts still challenging him when he doesn't meet that standard.
By the same token, the film earns that notion of true love between Belle and the Beast. It would have been easy for the movie to coast on the goodwill of cutesy montages involving baby birds, and heartwarming songs bolstered by the production’s impressive design and animation team. Instead, *Beauty and the Beast* does more. It has the Beast make a choice -- a choice to sacrifice his own happiness, his own chance at redemption, in order to vindicate what Belle wants. Contrary to any moral on the merits of Stockholm Syndrome, the film posits that true love comes from freely-made choices, and from being willing to put the wants and needs of someone you care about over your own because you not only recognize it’s the right thing to do, but because you want to.
The film’s ending is rife with the silly slapstick and striking fisticuffs and bright, shiny postscript that you expect from Disney. But *Beauty and the Beast* more than earns the path to there from its beginning. More than just the hummable tunes, more than those breathtaking images, more than just the fairytale trappings, it transcends those modern-day critiques by embracing a story where, through challenging circumstances, personal choices, and an understanding of the depths that lie beyond the surface, someone we love can help us to find fulfillment where we weren’t expecting it, and even to become our better selves.
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