Encanto

[droqen]

I enjoyed the premise of this film but I was sort of dreading this thing that it seems mainline animated Disney movies all do, where they strip away the fantasy for the sake of a well-meaning and even evocative, but painfully artless, statement on the human condition and life and love and so on.

A weird aside:

I received a book of psalms and something-elses from a stranger on the street the other day and I flipped through its pages and I noticed the same sort of rug pull happening in that text: here is a scenario, here is a message, and the scenario no longer matters. It was an empty vessel.

11 "Which of you fathers, if your son asks for[a] a fish, will give him a snake instead? 12 Or if he asks for an egg, will give him a scorpion? 13 If you then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!"

link

Encanto followed this basic structure but more beautifully and for 1 1/2 hours rather than three or four lines of simple text:

It sets up a relatable character with a relatable problem, and spins a beautiful fantastic tale. The fantasy-world is built on soft and flexible logic; when the problem is resolved it does not follow from the logic of the world, but from something about the human experience. We return to the soft and flexible logic, to tie up loose ends in a way that seems true to the message.

I'd like to revisit this through the lens of patterns but it's Christmas Eve and I want to get to sleep early and wake up at a good time and hang out with the family :)

(The tone I use above is judgemental because I found the film's fantasy to be a bit flat. But... I think it's interesting to observe patterns like this; I'd like to understand what it accomplishes and how to recreate it. I'd like to understand better what it is that made it not sing for me. And I did like a lot about the movie. There was just... something...)

[droqen]

As we talk about the movie afterwards and revisit the songs I like this movie more! I kinda want to watch it again.