this movie has so much heart
anyone agree?
shareIt does have heart, yes. But it's also horribly naive. I really like it and I really dislike it at the same time...
I get why Cinderella is SUCH a goody two-shoes. And the moral is indeed sweet and all... But that's just not how life works. You don't just let yourself be abused emotionally and physically in the hopes that MAYBE one day a fairy godmother will help you get a prince and everything will get better. Unlike the "Ever After" Cinderella, this version does NOTHING to help herself. She just smiles and hopes and good things happen to her spontaneously: either through magic or just via "sheer dumb luck" (oh she just so happens to start singing when she opens the window! Oh look the prince just randomly pops up from under soldier clothes at just the right house, to show that he'd been spying on his men... when? Only now? The entire time? WHAT?!?). And to top it all off, the naivete and the "it just so happened" nature of the plot is countered with the horrible loss of no less than THREE parents in just one movie! So in this cruel world of loss and grief I'm supposed to believe that just being charming will save the day for me? How did any of that help Cinderella up UNTIL she finally got her random strokes of good luck? Everything just seemed to be going downhill and downhill and downhill. And she kept doing nothing to help herself. And then BOOM! MAGIC!
Realistically, this film would've ended with Cinderella either taking a stand for herself against these horrible women and thus gaining the respect she deserved (but losing the doe-eyed innocence that's apparently her selling point); killing them; or working for them until the girls left for marriage, the mother got old, and Cinderella died of pneumonia or something else caused by all the work, cold and soot she'd been exposed to.
It's magical, yes. And sweet. And SO idealistic. But I'm still not sure I'm 100% FOR this sort of naivete. And no, it's not JUST the source material (I'm very understanding with stuff like that), because "Ever After" took that source material and gave it just the right nuances to turn it into something credible. Well... "more" credible.
Or maybe I'm just getting too damn old for these films... which would be scary. And sad.
I get all you're saying, but in Ever After, the same thing happened. Things just happened to work out for Danielle. If she hadn't gone to court to save Maurice, Danielle still would've been a servant in her manor until her stepsisters got married and/or until Rodmilla died. In Ever After, the Prince just happened to steal her father's horse; he just happened to give her 20 gold francs for her silence; Gustave just happened to have a noblewoman's dress in his studio for Danielle to use as a disguise.
In life, there are coincidences even after months of disappointments.
Sometimes in abusive situations it's tough. The person wants to run away but can't. It's not a matter of sticking up for yourself. I think some of the bravest people have been walked all over by others without being able to do anything about it. Sometimes a person has to wait in life. And I think that is a valuable lesson. Patience. It's one thing the story teaches us. And anyway, where would Cinderella go? and What would she do? And what would she pay for things with? Her stepmother probably had control of all the finances. Is she just going to say, "Good Riddance!" and storm out of there, and then be stuck in the rain under a tree somewhere? She HAD to wait. The story makes perfect sense.
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What you're saying isnt quite accurate, this Cinderella wasn't even "hoping" for something good/magical to happen. She was simply content to deal with her circumstances, and didnt expect any luck to come her way. That's the whole point and is why she's noble
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