Maleficent depicts how usurping violence works similarly, unleashing a tangled chain of pain and hatred, one that will consume us all if we let it.White women’s ambition and naïveté - the story of Maleficent 2 is an examination of white women in leadership (I suppose Hayao Miyazaki’s Princess Mononoke gets a deserved nod here as well.) Thorns are a fitting symbol for the movie, considering they poke both inward and outward, threatening the very ones they’ve been erected to protect. Overall, the production design is a thrilling ode to Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, especially the walls of thorns that are erected, both by Maleficent (of wood) and Stefan (of iron). There is hope for her to still be the creature of light she once was. Rather, it’s a shot of Maleficent’s wings, which have been placed in a trophy case by Stefan, suddenly beating to life. My favorite moment in the film doesn’t involve Jolie at all. Later, during a climactic confrontation, Stefan and Maleficent find themselves chained to each other – connected by their shared history of hate. Hardened by her trauma and bent on vengeance, Maleficent marches into the Moors with a dark cloud behind her, one that comes to cast a shadow over the land. Stromberg and his visual team devise many ways to envision the insidiousness of the evil at the story’s heart.
MALEFICENT NARRATOR MOVIE
Still, it would be a mistake to say that the movie depends entirely on Jolie. After all, it was supposed true love that cursed her. Even her promise that the curse can be lifted by “true love’s kiss” is less an escape clause than a bitter turning of the knife. Stefan took from her now, by proclaiming that at the age of 16 Aurora will prick her finger and fall into an eternal sleep, Maleficent takes from him. It’s a reclaiming of autonomy, a re-establishing of identity and an act of diabolical revenge. Her anger having heightened her power, she revels in the chance to crash Aurora’s christening and bring Stefan to his knees. Jolie’s showcase scene is the curse Maleficent puts on Stefan’s baby after he has ascended to the throne. Maleficent is, after all, trying on a role after she transforms into a vengeful sorceress. Even her accent – one part British and two parts Joan Crawford – works for the character. Jolie is also able to embrace the theatricality of the part without using camp as a safety net. A narrowing of them is worth a thousand words. Aside from a moving soliloquy, in which Maleficent describes what her wings once meant to her, most of Jolie’s work is done with her eerie, CGI-enhanced eyes. Jolie is crucial, able to internalize this psychology and then project it through a deceptively intricate performance. (It’s also a nod to the sexual violence in one of the earliest variations on this tale, told by Giambattista Basile in the 17 th century, well before the Brothers Grimm.) And so Maleficent becomes – in our modern terms – a trauma survivor. This scene, of Maleficent being dismembered in her sleep, is a shocking stand-in for sexual assault, especially considering the film is rated PG. He also takes – spoiler alert – her wings. This ignites a pilot light of evil in the heart of Stefan (Sharlto Copley), a servant who has previously encountered Maleficent at the edge of the Moors. The Moors are coveted by a nearby human king (Kenneth Cranham), who decrees that the man who kills Maleficent – now an adult, and played by Angelina Jolie – will inherit the throne. A peaceful if spirited sprite, Maleficent watches over the fantastic creatures of the Moors, a loosely self-governed land of exotic, sentient flowers and rolling waterfalls. Years before the princess of this tale, Aurora, is even born, we meet the fairy Maleficent as a teen (Isobelle Molloy). Written by Linda Woolverton ( Alice in Wonderland, The Lion King) and directed by first-timer Robert Stromberg, Maleficent is largely Disney’s Sleeping Beauty retold from the villain’s point of view. Evil here is borne of – then visited upon – rapacious men. “Let us tell an old tale anew,” the opening voiceover narration proposes, “to see how well you know it.” What we come to know through Maleficent is that the Sleeping Beauty legend still functions as a potent moral tale, this time with a particular awareness of patriarchal oppression. Maleficent is yet another revisionist fairy tale, though unlike many of them, it revises to a purpose.
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