Recommended Age Limit:
This was one of the first films I showed to my daughter at age 2, and I can give my full recommendation of this to everyone. As early as you are comfortable with your child watching a screen, I am comfortable recommending this film for them.
We’ve now had over a decade of flavorless, “updated” live-action remakes of classic Walt Disney fairytale films, from Mulan to Pete’s Dragon, unwillingly imposed on us (write in separately if you can explain how someone could possibly have been excited for a Lady and the Tramp remake). Whether entries in this bizarre genre actually attempted to add story elements or simply made lifeless shot-for-shot clones, they nearly all failed by misunderstanding the original film, and worse, the original fairytale. As we’ll see, fairytales do not need to be changed for a modern audience; rather, they need beautiful presentation, to allow the modern audience to be changed. Cinderella (2015) succeeds by taking the opposite approach from the rest: Kenneth Branagh’s remake is even more traditional than its predecessor.
In one of the first lines of the film, Ella asks her mother, “Do you believe in fairy godmothers?” Her mother answers in a way only a Catholic mother could: “I believe in everything,” or as we say at Holy Mass, credo in…visibilium omnium, et invisibilium. This is the first evidence that Ella is raised and formed by a Catholic worldview, a sacramental view of reality. The recurring song Ella sings throughout the film, taught to her by her mother, is Lavenders blue, lavenders green:
Lavenders blue, dilly dilly, lavenders green
When I am king, dilly dilly, you shall be queen.
Lavenders green, dilly dilly, lavenders blue,
You must love me, dilly dilly, for I love you.
This song is quite evocative of the transforming effect of sanctifying grace given us in Baptism. The Apostle writes that by the grace of the Holy Spirit we are made “heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ,” (Rom 8:17) and as the Bride of Christ, we in the church are wed to the King of Glory, made perfect by His love, as St. John tells us, “We love, because He first loved us.” (1 John 4:19).
The filmmakers give us another discreet display of Christ’s pursuit of the beloved in Ella’s encounter with the great stag, moments before her first encounter with Prince Kit. The Stag has been a symbol of Christ for centuries; the medievals believed the stag to be the enemy of the serpent, driving snakes into their abysses and healing their venom. In this scene, not only are we given this symbol, but Ella is given first exposure to Kit, who will become her rescuer from the evil of Lady Tremain (who, notably, only wears green in this film).
The theme of pursuit is woven throughout the tale, and in yet another subtle way in the scene introducing the fairy godmother. Although Ella is in despair, the fairy godmother comes to her aid not only because of her habitual charity, but explicitly for the sake of her mother’s faith in all good things. This evokes Christ’s desire to have us in Baptism even as helpless infants, on account of the faith of our parents and godparents. The magic the godmother brings transforms Ella the way grace does to us – it builds upon her nature. Her mother’s clothes, now torn; her faithful friends, though animals; her own beauty, though marred with mud, is elevated, as St. Paul tells us, “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven.” (1 Cor. 15:49).
This film is essential for families to watch with their children because the heroes are all heroic and the villains vile. Most personally to me, Ella’s father is her first hero. Her father constantly gives her gifts from his travels, but the real gift he gives her is an upbringing in virtue and compassion. The narrator describes her beautiful childhood as a time when, “all was just as it should be,” where Ella models perfect obedience to her parents, and it becomes clear that a central theme in this film is filial piety. Ella’s driving motive for goodness is given to her by her mother’s parting words on her deathbed: have courage and be kind.
Likewise, the king is not a bumbling old man, but a magnanimous leader of men who raises the Christ-like son, Prince Kit, who is formed with an eye for beauty and desire for a virtuous wife. When Ella first meets Prince Kit, he is immediately drawn to her virtue, and finds that his heart is hers already, truly love at first sight. In one of the King’s last moments in life, he continues to teach his son the noble path of sacrifice, saying, “we are all flesh, boy. Now come, we must tend to our kingdom.” Ella and the prince both lose their mother early on in life, and become who they are through their fathers’ dedication to raising them to honor their mothers’ memory.
Kit is manly, not just a pretty boy - he is captivated with Ella’s goodness and can’t allow himself to let her go. Like Christ, Kit will stop at nothing to find the hundredth sheep, looking everywhere for his beloved. Near the finale, when Ella is trapped by her stepmother, she begs Lady Tremain to allow her to keep her glass slipper, imploring that it is the only thing she has. This turns out to be true - her identity as a princess, an interior reality symbolized in that shoe, is made externally real by the prince’s love. She is a princess because he loves her, just as we, the bride of Christ, are made heavenly royalty because of Christ’s love for us.
The last word I’ll say on this is that Ella adopts her name of mockery, Cinderella, as her royal name and becomes a holy paradox, a sign of contradiction. Ella, like Christ, is identified by a royal title of poverty; “Princess Cinderella” is a type of “Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum,” essentially a title of “her royal highness, the pauper,” a royal identity that never forgets its origin of poverty.
Ella’s life is keenly shaped by her grief from this loss, which is sharply contrasted by the way Lady Tremain allows her own grief from loss to turn her into the vicious villain - a prime example of a truly vicious person, who sees good as evil and evil as good (but more on the villains later).
Cinderella is such a notable exception to the Disney Remake™ filmography because it is neither a replica nor a rewrite; it is a faithful retelling of the tale, an iteration in the legacy of the brothers Grimm. Notably, the evil of the villains is made even clearer than in the original film, and made closer to the tale, and a sharper contrast given between Cinderella and her mother. Ella’s life is keenly shaped by her grief from this loss, which is sharply contrasted by the way Lady Tremain allows her own grief from loss to turn her into the vicious villain - a prime example of a truly vicious person, who sees good as evil and evil as good (but more on the villains later). The destruction of Ella’s dress is the clearest manifestation of Tremain’s hatred of goodness, especially when she says, “How could I do otherwise? I will not have anyone associate my daughters with you.” Ella later begs, “Why do you treat me like this?” to which Tremain responds, “Because you are young, innocent, and Good, and I…”. This film punches home the victory of virtue over vice in a way unsurpassed by any Disney film this century.
My final recommendations come on the count of score and cast. The score is fantastical, engaging, and delightful. Lily James and Cate Blanchett are marvelous standouts among a castlist that has no holes.
Honestly, I can’t recommend this film enough.
Thank you for this review--I love this film! The other marvelously Catholic moment in the movie is when Cinderella says to her stepmother, "I forgive you"-- truly beautiful.