Over the past few years a noticeable trend has emerged with Disney releasing ‘live action’ versions of many of their classic films.
Cinderella and The Jungle Book have already had the treatment, and there are rumours that Mulan and The Lion King are well into the production process. Opinions differ as to whether rehashing the classics is just laziness and a desire for guaranteed success, but there’s no doubt that anticipating the release of these films appeals to our nostalgia. Beauty and the Beast was released mid-March and smashed box office records, re-establishing itself as one of Disney’s most beloved tales.
There’s a stellar ensemble cast – Emma Watson as Belle, Luke Evans and Josh Gad as alpha male chauvinist Gaston and sidekick LeFou respectively, Dan Stevens of Downton Abbey is unrecognisable in the CGI-treated role of the witty and endearing Beast, while Emma Thompson, Ian McKellan and Ewan McGregor as Mrs Potts, Cogsworth and Lumiere positively light up the dark atmosphere of the castle. With a handful of new songs and an elaboration of both titular characters’ family histories, the film otherwise remains largely true to the original film.
Embodying all the sparkle, music and magic of the original, but brighter and deeper by virtue of its live action treatment, the film is enchanting from start to finish, only weak where it tries directly to emulate the original, such as the big musical numbers ‘Be Our Guest’ and ‘Gaston’.
The larger narrative doesn’t deviate, so there’s little to surprise, but the impact is all the greater for the plot being played out by humans instead of drawings. It captures imaginations in telling a story which is held together by the theme of redeeming love. The film loudly echoes the supreme narrative of the gospel in which we all play out our lives, as we see these characters embark on the very human search for freedom and identity. In the end, they find a satisfying answer to which Christians can say ‘Amen’.
Freedom
Despite a believably blossoming friendship between Belle and the Beast, Belle is still technically a prisoner, paying for the misdemeanour of her father. Seeing that her father needs help, the Beast releases Belle from her prison, the castle, even though he knows that freeing her will come at great cost to himself if she does not return. If she does not come back, she won’t fall in love with him, the only antidote to the curse that binds the Beast and his servants to their unreal life. He releases her because he loves her and wants her to freely choose to love him. ‘How can anyone be happy when they’re not truly free?’ Belle asks him.
Lumiere chastises the Beast – how could he let Belle go? She was their only hope for being freed from the bondage of their curse, and now she has gone. But the Beast’s love for Belle overrides any selfish impulse to force her to love him for his own benefit.
Identity
The story of Beauty and the Beast might be the best of the Disney stories, because it is the enduring tale of the lifting of a destructive enchantment by a powerful redemptive love, so that its characters may be raised to new life, a fuller and better life than that which they lived before. The characters are deeply connected to one another, never more obviously so than when the animated objects of the castle die in the same moment that the Beast dies – at the point when the final petal falls. At Belle’s confession of her love for Beast, the true love which can lift the curse of death, the Beast is raised to new life, and so too are his servants. They all died because the Beast died – their lives are united to his – so in his resurrection, they too are raised. Every character whose life had been darkened and twisted by the curse is resurrected to a more human life than they’d ever lived before; they find their true identity. They are all made new.
The final dancefloor of the film is a heavenly vision. Everyone has a place and is richly clothed beyond deserving – villagers, servants, royalty, rich, poor, black and white, all partake of the celebration of true love, because this love has had an impact on them all. Beauty and the Beast might have been made anew in its live action format, but it’s still the oldest tale of all time – that of being loved by such a powerfully redeeming love that we become our true selves.
The gay moment?
In a provocative move prior to the film's release, Disney declared it would feature the company's first ‘gay moment’. This turned out to be quite the storm in a teacup, with the moment it references being a sub-two second scene depicting two men waltzing. This may herald a worrying departure for Disney, and it may serve to put some off from seeing Beauty and the Beast, but it is a film that is rich with gospel themes and could prompt conversations with friends and family on the truth, beauty and goodness of the gospel.
