Compelling tale

It’s been a big year for fairytales in the entertainment world. First there was the TV series Once Upon A Time, then Grimm and now we have the competing feature films… Tarsem Singh’s Mirror, Mirror, a family feature that upchucked yawns across the globe and, more recently, the darker poisoned version, Snow White and the Huntsman, by former ad man and first-time feature director Rupert Sanders.

Sanders successfully shares his gift along with cinematographer Greig Fraser, proving he has an eye for showing the beautiful and the bizarre, shying away from a copy-cat remake of the beloved classic.

Naturally, it began with a narrator giving the ‘once upon a time’ fairytale trademark but within minutes viewers are left neck-deep in a battle filled with action sequences showing armoured men slaying obsidian warriors with hooves of horses sinking into the ground, reminiscent of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings. It is in this battle that the king finds the beautiful prisoner Ravenna, played by Charlize Theron, to take as his queen.

Seizing the throne, she kills the king and banishes her stepdaughter Snow White (Kristen Stewart) into a locked cell, turning the kingdom into a decaying mess.
A few years later Snow flees the castle, which in turn results in Queen Ravenna sending Thor, who plays a drunkard and a huntsman, to capture her. He soon turns sides and helps Snow White run from the queen.

Sanders offers the audience a visually inventive and stunning adaptation. Even with this well-known fairytale, he shows a talent for unpredictability and impulsiveness.

There were moments where I was lost in the scenery and the abstract images, which were used to exaggerate the characters and costumes, giving life to the story.

With the dark forest, the queen bathing in thick milky liquid, the shattered glass and the dozens of crows insanely flapping, it symbolised the gothic nature behind the movie.

Theron offers a theatrical menace with an excellent performance as an over-the-top, soul-sucking, wicked witch. Her acting was strangely cathartic, but heigh-ho heigh-ho heigh-ho, the dwarfs stole the show from Snow! They added humour and heart to the movie as well as moments of action. With their singing and dancing they definitely heated up the second act.

It is when we are introduced to them that the only homage to Walt Disney is apparent, showing a psychedelic heaven complete with woodland creatures, fairies and brightly-coloured butterflies.

The only downside to the film is that the actual story never lives up to these exhilarating visual effects and optics.

In addition to this, the movie failed to explore any other characters other than Snow White and Queen Ravenna, making most, if not all, of the secondary actors useless. Of these are Snow White’s childhood friend Prince William and the 30-seconds we see of Lily Cole. Even the huntsman, who is mentioned in the title of the film, is weighed down giving him one scene of true emotion.

It may have been 20 minutes too long but the visuals alongside the more serious tone pulled off an entertaining, inventive version of a worn-out story not to mention the most compelling take on it thus far.

Sanders has taken the classic tale to its most menacing extreme. It’s not without flaws but offers a taste of what is yet to come from this director.