Beauty and the
Beast is up there with Lion King,
Little Mermaid and Aladdin in my
childhood favorite movies list. I watched it all the time; heck, I wanted to be Belle. Who wouldn’t? She’s a
wonderful heroine. She sacrifices her dreams, her life, in order to save her
father. Her actions are led by a kind heart; she’s sweet and gentle. Yet at the
same time, she stands up for herself, stays true to her beliefs, and doesn’t
let the fact that she’s ‘different’ from anyone else change her. What a
wonderful role model.
Except for the eye color, I’ve always looked most like
Belle. Even when I was younger, I had the long brunette hair and big eyes.
Granted I’m a bit shorter than I’d imagine her real-life counterpart to be and
I have green eyes, but we share more than just some physical attributes. For
one thing, I’ve always loved books. Like Belle, I would read as I walked, read
to animals (although I didn’t have a picturesque fountain surrounded by sheep,
I read to animals of the stuffed variety or my dog and cats, if they’d hold
still long enough). I identified the most with Belle, because she saw the world
a little differently, and I felt I did too (being a bookworm does that to you).
With a few exceptional movies, there’s a certain scene
that always stays with you. With Lion
King, it’s the scene with Mufasa and Simba lying under the stars together.
With Little Mermaid, it’s Ariel
pushing herself up onto the rock as a mermaid and singing about something
starting right then. For me, with Beauty,
it isn’t the ballroom scene or the transformation scene. It’s a scene with
Belle by herself, running into a field of dandelions and singing, “I want much
more than this provincial life/ I want adventure in the great wide somewhere/ I
want it more than I can tell/ and for once it might be grand/ to have someone
understand/ I want so much more than they’ve got planned.”
It’s not often a movie changes your life, but I can
genuinely say that this scene, coupled with Ellie from UP’s saying, “Adventure is out there!” is part of what inspired our
move to Alaska. Like Belle, we were seen as a bit odd for packing up and moving
4,000 miles away to a place we’d only visited for a few days, is drastically
different from where we were living, and where we had no family, friends or
acquaintances. We moved with adventure in our hearts, and we certainly found
it. Yet the idea of adventure was placed in our hearts long ago, with scenes
such as that one from Beauty and the
Beast.
I was presented with a tough choice this past January:
the Broadway adaptation of Beauty was
coming to Anchorage at the exact same time the 3-D re-release was hitting
theatres. Both were available for only a short time, and happened to be at the
same time. Because both were expensive, though the stage edition was much
pricier than the 3-D theatrical release, I had to choose just one to
experience. I’ve always loved theatre, but I chose the theatrical release because,
after all, the Broadway tour has been around for years but this was the first
time in ten years it was re-released in theatres (there was an IMAX 2002
release, but I didn’t live near an IMAX and missed it that time. I wasn’t about
to wait another ten years to see it in theatres again!). I was glad it was in
theatres again for a multitude of reasons, one of which being I love it, so
seeing it on the big screen was spectacular (it also means the only 3-D films
I’ve seen have been animated). The main reason I was happy to see it in such a
way was because it’s now been experienced theatrically by a whole new generation
of children.
Another favored scene is the library sequence. The only diorama
model I remember making was in high school for a theatre class, and I staged
the library scene from Beauty. I
loved the sheer volume of books, the staircases, the huge windows, the
fireplace. Heaven, to me, is that library. If I could live in any animated
movie scene, it would be the library (with Simba and Mufasa curled up next to
me, of course! Oh, don’t be silly—animated lions aren’t dangerous!). There are
even two lion statues on either side of the entryway to the library.
Costume design in animated films is often overlooked, but
it’s quite important. I’d love to have Belle’s entire wardrobe (despite the fact
I don’t live in old timey provincial France). There’s also a lot of symbology
in their costuming. No one in the village but Belle wears the color blue; the
Beast is also clothed in blue. Blue is seen as the ‘good’ color, while red symbolizes
evil (Gaston and Lefou’s costumes are mostly red).
The music is the last complete work by lyricist Howard
Ashman and composer Alan Menken. Alan Menken I’ve mentioned before in one of my
favorite-composer-tangents. He and Howard Ashman also collaborated on Little Mermaid and Howard Ashman
contributed some to Aladdin before he
passed away, much too early. The dedication of Beauty and the Beast reads,” To our friend Howard, who gave a
mermaid her voice and a beast his soul, we will be forever grateful.” I always
get misty when I see that dedication.
Despite the hundreds of viewings, I always cry when the
beast dies and then transforms. I can’t help it—despite his temper and getting
them cursed, the servants still love him and cry for him. He had developed good
qualities, even before meeting Belle.
My one irk with the film is that we never learn the Beast’s
name. She calls him Beast, the servants call him Master, but no one calls him
by his pre-enchanted name. Apparently it’s Prince Adam, but he’s never called that.
His lack of a name seems to imply the Beast name applies to more than just his
looks. But once he redeems himself, we should learn his name. Ah, well. It’s
still a magnificent film.
Gaston is a magnificent villain. He’s manipulative, creepy,
and crazy. He also meets with the head of the asylum in the middle of the
night, whom I’ve always thought looked scarily close to the Crypt Keeper.
The
opening scene of the film, when you glimpse the castle through the waterfall
and the woods, is one of my favorite scenes in Disney animation. The sheer
amount of detail, from the deer drinking in the stream to the birds flitting
about, makes it feel real. The use of the multi-plane camera, which Walt helped
develop in the 1930’s, as well as the use of CGI in the ballroom scene make
this film the perfect bridge between the animation past and future. That, in a
nutshell, is what Disney does best: connect us to each other, our shared
history, and our shared future—much as if we were dandelion seeds dancing in
the wind, together yet apart.
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