This is Angelina’s best role
A lesson even. Sharp, shrill, protruding, Jolie is back in one of her best roles. In a few scenes, she dominates the whole (character and film) in a mind-blowing way and reminds us that she is the biggest Hollywood star. All he needs is three expressions and a well-intentioned approach to succeed in giving depth and credibility to a character who was only an iconic bogeyman without depth. A cape, clipped wings, and that haunting bony face? Impossible to see Maleficent without noticing that, with age, the actress cultivates this bizarre strangeness, a morbid dryness which contrasts with the stereotypes of the Hollywood blockbuster star (virile woman or sexy killer). Here, she mutes her sexual charge to keep only the death urges and her attempts at redemption. As she did in Wanted and in SaltJolie draws the quintessence of her character, filling it with the minimum to give it maximum impact. It is this absolute dosage, this monstrous control which leaves the spectator in disbelief. At this point of mastery, in the background, we only see Tom Cruise.
But it’s not just her and the interest of the film also lies in what she plays: a live Disney character. Far from the monstrous antics of Depp/Hatter or the queer madness of Franco in Oz, Jolie embodies her witch character in a hyper straight, almost literal way. She draws inspiration from her model and tries to give him depth and humanity where the two previous live-action heroes sought to make their characters crazy. This is undoubtedly where the real success of this film lies, transcended from start to finish by an unparalleled performance.
Angelina Jolie: “I look forward to the day when we finally stop asking a woman why she directs films”
It’s an artistic director’s film
Not from a director. Just see the fairy world from the opening of Maleficent to remember that Robert Stromberg was first the Production Designer of James Cameron and Tim Burton. A head designer, a DA (of genius, yes) capable of giving substance to the craziest and most eccentric visions. The film plunders (with more or less happiness) the Edenic phantasmagorias ofAvatarthe luxuriant universes of Big Fish and of Alice in Wonderland. It’s beautiful, poisonous. Monumental. But quickly sterile. Because beyond the incredible 3D, the photography and the visions of dragons, aerial ballets or plant madness, the film fails to take off, to embody its emotional issues. Never carried by a staging that lives up to these visions, Maleficent dark in illustration and doesn’t achieve the epic feel it’s aiming for. This is particularly glaring in the combat scenes (the dragon, the war) which are not very well managed, the twist in the plot and especially the part which concerns Aurore, which is a bit silly.
Angelina Jolie on Maleficent: “This scene is a metaphor for rape”
It’s a funny experience
We know the principle: tell the story of Sleeping Beauty from the witch’s point of view. Double challenge for Disney: invert the morality (the hero is a villain) and play with the feeling of déjà vu without tiring the viewer. Stromberg, not very knowledgeable in psychoanalysis but skilled in illustration, invents an original way of dealing with a truly universal subject, which affects practically all the inhabitants of the planet. Namely those who knew the original tale, but especially the millions of spectators who ” already seen ” the version “official” from the cartoon. The characters are faithful to the meeting of the memory: the three slightly stupid fairies, the shape-shifting crow, the witch, the king, the charming prince. They’re all there, but they’ve all changed a little. A bit like when you return to an old house that you haven’t lived in for a long time and where a new owner has changed the layout, you are in familiar territory but still with a feeling of strangeness. Yes, the plan of Maleficent triumphant is there, copied from the original cartoon, but the dragon no longer has the same face. And the curse has changed. It is in these differences that the interest of the film lies, among others. Less in the radical changes (we feel that the beginning of the film, the origin story of the witch, has been cut down) than in these subtle variations.
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It’s a remake of Frozen
A witch who lives as a recluse, a curse that must be tried to stop, the (symbolic) death of Prince Charming, and the idea of the sister/mother who wakes up the sleeping princess. Strangely, Maleficent is less a rereading of Sleeping Beauty than a live remake of The Snow Queenthe latest hit from the big-eared studio. Fascinating parallel: Maleficent is ultimately as much an operation of relifting the classics, a way of keeping the heritage alive (one of the major challenges of the house since its beginnings) as of asserting once again the intangible identity of the studio.
At a time when it has become the biggest cinema empire, the most powerful major of the time (Marvel? Disney. Star Wars? Disney. Indiana Jones? Disney), the challenge is now to know how to preserve its identity in this pop cultural universe. Maleficent is in this respect a “statement”. Disney is first of all a reappropriation of its catalog (infinite in its potential rereadings) and narrative axes (the reinvention of the princess film) which intersect and are identical, whether live or in animation. Fall back on your fundamentals to better break the house. Revisiting your own mythology to better launch yourself into the future.
What is its sequel, released in 2019, worth?
Maleficent: The Power of Evil, harmless curse (review)
