Running Time: 2 hours, 7 minutes
Rating: PG-13
Director: Rupert Sanders
Quick Impressions:
Last week before Men in Black, a trailer came on for Snow White and the Huntsman. As the preview played, my three-year-old’s jaw dropped. She sat watching, eyes wide, mouth gaping. Since it was pretty intense, I worried that she was scared. The instant the screen went dark, however, she gasped out in a voice brimming with awe, “I want to see that movie.”
Before we left the house today, I asked her, “Are you ready to see Snow White and the Huntsman?” Taking a deep breath, she answered, “I’m still brave. I’m brave. I’m brave.”
She spent most of the movie with her blanket over her head, but she did watch the whole thing attentively. (She’d peek out and then replace the blanket when things got too tense.) Just before the end credits rolled, she cheered, “Hooray! I was brave enough!”
To be honest, she did have to be pretty brave. This movie is really not for three-year-olds. Some of the visuals are intense, frightening, and disturbing. (Not for adults, but when I was a kid, this would have scared me.) It’s the stuff of nightmares.
The Good:
This movie is stunning visually. As Snow White entered the Dark Forest for the first time, I thought, You know, this could be a silent movie. It wouldn’t even need any title cards. To be honest, I think the film would have been better without sound (though it probably would have lost its audience that way). Don’t get me wrong, the score is lovely, but the dialogue leaves something to be desired. It’s not obnoxious, just flat, needless. Its absence would likely go unnoticed. You can’t say that about many movies.
Tim Burton’s films always have an exciting visual aesthetic, but the visuals in this movie go beyond that. The carefully dressed scenes actually advance the plot. This movie could be a series of paintings. It’s kind of like the Bayeux Tapestry or something (narratively, I mean). The visuals aren’t just captivating, they’re stunning, and they’re telling the story on their own. The dialogue doesn’t give them much help, but they really don’t need help.
This would be a wonderful film to show in the background at a party.
As the wicked queen, Ravenna, Charlize Theron is conspicuously gorgeous and captivating. Theron gives an impassioned performance and does a lot with the material she’s given, but, as with every other aspect of the movie, looks are Ravenna’s great strength. Theron’s beauty works perfectly with her deliciously grotesque costumes. She’s so striking, and her scenes seem to have been ripped from children’s nightmares.
The movie is also strangely earnest, which works against it in many ways, but ultimately proves a saving grace.
Best Scene:
Though there’s something strangely satisfying about watching Snow White slide through the storm drain (a moment I first saw in previews), and my husband mentions the equally resonant scene of the queen arising from what appears to be a magical milk bath, I think my favorite scene of the movie comes when Ravenna has the conversation about Snow White’s heart with her magic mirror, while her brother watches from the recesses of the room. I’m not sure why I liked that scene, though. All of the highlights of this movie, every single most memorable moment, involves a kind of visceral rush of terror or delight as some unforgettable spectacle dominates your field of view.
In some ways this seems appropriate. In any version of the Snow White story, the wicked queen places an unnatural emphasis on the value of external beauty, and the magic of Snow White and the Hunstman comes from its haunting appearance. What lies beneath is not as rich as the appearance suggests, but it’s also not important. The spell is cast. The eye is entranced.
I probably should mention the scene that meant most to my daughter. She keeps talking about it—that one scene—over and over again. To avoid spoilers, I’ll only tell you what she asks. “Why does the queen trick Snow White? Why is the apple so fuzzy? Why is it a trick? Why does she want to trick her? Why does it work? Why does Snow White get tricked?”
Apparently that’s the most memorable scene for my daughter. Like me, she seems hung up on the rift between appearance and reality in Snow White and the Huntsman.
Best Scene Visually:
I wasn’t expecting all the stuff with the fairies. Usually previews these days spoil just about every scene of a movie, so I didn’t expect an entire world full of beautiful, magical, kind-of-trippy creatures. My daughter left her blanket off her head during the entire scene, until the end of Snow White’s encounter with the stag. All of that was thoroughly enchanting.
Apart from this portion of the film, all of the most striking scenes belong to Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna. The whole “fairest” bit doesn’t really make sense to me. Clearly, in terms of looks, Snow White is nowhere close to the queen’s level of “fairness.” And if we’re talking about personality, surely every maiden in the land is “fairer” than the queen. But Ravenna is definitely stunning.
Best Action Sequence:
When Snow White and company stormed the castle, I suddenly realized that I had been zoned out for quite a while. (The dwarves had just done something quite amusing with a horse, and then suddenly, it was the final showdown.) I presume that what I missed was the best action sequence. Had there not been tons of nonstop action, I would have been paying closer attention. So that is probably the best action scene in the movie.
Funniest Scene:
I laughed when the army rode up and began discussing the tides and the time a siege would take. I know Snow White has some secret plan she’s playing close to the chest, but I thought it was strange that nobody else seems to have any semblance of a practical plan at all. I mean, before the Evil Queen came to town, these people used to hang around that castle all the time. It’s not an unknown area. Why on earth don’t they have a decent plan of their own? You’re not supposed to laugh at that, of course, but I found it pretty absurd.
There’s not a lot of humor in the movie. The dwarves supply most of the laughs, even though they’re not the type of cutesy, bumbling, comedian dwarves we usually see dancing and singing around Snow White.
The Negatives:
Queen Ravenna looks beautiful, incredible, but scratch the surface, and you get mummy dust, decay, and emptiness. The movie is like that, too. The illusion is everything. The magic comes from what you see. There is nothing else, nothing deeper, nothing of substance.
A huge flaw of this movie is that no effort is made to define or explain the world. We’re supposed to know the Snow White story going in and just go with the flow, it seems.
Where is this story supposed to take place? Particularly as he narrates the story, the Huntsman sounds vaguely Gaelic. The movie was filmed in Ireland. But we’re given no information about the boundaries of the world on the screen. It seems fictional, fantastical, like a place far removed from our reality.
But then Snow White starts saying The Lord’s Prayer. Other than that, there is not the slightest hint of Christianity in the film. This is extremely confusing. I get the feeling that the Our Father is thrown in there to establish that Snow White is a good girl who turns to prayer rather than hideous black magic, but that seems like a dumb gesture from a film that has such a smart eye. Visually, the film is close to being a masterpiece. But its spoken narrative is sadly lacking.
Weirdly, the movie proceeds just as if we already understand the story’s world, its boundaries, its rules, its social classes, and so forth. And we kind of do if we don’t think deeply, which is also weird. I think its unflinching earnestness ultimately saves the film because it never deviates from this weird, stoic, “you understand, our world is like this” line. But despite the nightmarish visuals and popular actors, you feel like you’re watching a children’s story. Snow White and the Huntsman seems to think it’s more complex than the 1937 Disney animated feature, but it’s not, not really. And given the adult-oriented spin of the trailers, that’s kind of weird.
Watching the film, I kept thinking, This reminds me of a movie made by people drawing exclusively on previous movies. But that may be a false impression. Aspects of it really reminded me of The Princess Bride, particularly the way they treated the Dark Forest. It includes the kinds of scenes you always see in movies (i.e. giving the Huntsman a bath) by all appearances, simply because all movies have such scenes. And I’m sure that part with the white horse on the beach missed its calling as a music video, Trapper Keeper cover, or deleted scene from The Last Unicorn. Oh and then there’s that one aerial shot of all of them walking forth across the mountains on their quest—because that’s what you do in a movie like this. Haven’t you seen Lord of the Rings?
At moments, the events in the story don’t really seem to make sense. If Queen Ravenna is so weak, why is she able to reach Snow White herself when nobody else can catch her? If all she has to do is scare her out of the Dark Forest (so she can use her powers to catch up with her on the other side), then why do the queen’s men keep pursuing Snow White on horseback once she’s left the Dark Forest? And what on earth is going on with the queen’s brother? Why is that white horse just waiting on the beach?
Basically, the movie just isn’t very deep. It makes perfect sense if you keep the following points in mind the entire time: 1) Snow White is infused with the power of Good 2) Queen Ravenna draws strength from the power of Evil 3) Good conquers Evil. By the end of the movie, it’s perfectly clear that not only is Snow White the rightful heir to the throne, but she is completely filled with the power of everything that is Good. She’s good for what ails you. No matter what the illness, she’s the cure. Because she’s good and will restore the world, everyone and everything around her senses this and tries to help her. (All of this helps to explain the white horse, though I still think I remember it from an old Trapper Keeper.)
The Performances:
This movie boasts a high-powered cast, but, sadly, it doesn’t give them a whole lot to do.
Sam Spruell played my favorite character, Queen Ravenna’s bizarre brother Finn. Why did I like Finn so much? Well, he’s so weird. Try as I might, I could never get a good read on the guy. Not only does he look like a serial killer, but his behavior is highly unusual. Is he trying to let Snow White get away because he has a thing for her and he’s frightened by his sister’s growing power? If not, he is surely the most incompetent henchman ever. I can see why Ravenna gets angry at him because he never does anything right. And what he says to the Huntsman on the edge of the Dark Forest just makes no sense at all (I mean from a tactical standpoint). What is going on with this weirdo? Why is he even in the movie at all? He’s conspicuously stranger than everyone else around. The rest of them all seem like stereotypes who fit perfectly into the shallow story. But there’s something kind of kooky about this guy, and I think in different movie, we would have gotten a better read on him.
Then on the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Sam Clafin’s William, notable for being the most boring character in the story. What is William up to? Nothing much. What you see is what you get with William. Apparently, he’s just the same guy he was in elementary school. We keep waiting for something more to happen with him, but it never does, which is for the best since we all like the Hunstman better, anyway.
Rachael Stirling gives a strong performance in the story as Anna, one of many women who has found a dramatic method of escaping Queen Ravenna’s malicious grasp. Why didn’t we find out more about these people? They were extremely interesting but had such a limited role in the story.
The all-star Dwarves come late to the party—Bob Hoskins, Ian McShane, Ray Winstone, Nick Frost, Eddie Marsan, Toby Jones, and a few others. They’re an exciting bunch, but honestly, I think the story is better before their arrival. The more action is interjected into this movie, the worse the film becomes. The dwarves are very intriguing, all of them, because they apparently hold some well-known place in a society that has never been properly explained to us. One of them, Muir, played by Bob Hoskins, seems to have some sort of psychic ability. (My husband smiled at his plague mask, which seemed to imply he was Doc.) This power would be more interesting for us if we understood it. I think, if you’re going to have Dwarves at all, they should show up a little sooner and have a bit more to do.
Chris Hemsworth plays the Huntsman pretty well, but the part is not great. The character has a backstory of torment and pain, but he doesn’t really change much as the story progresses. We finally learn how he feels about Snow White because he tells us. The two characters have surprisingly little chemistry, which seems to be more the fault of the script than the actors.
Thankfully, the movie tells us early on that Snow White will be the fairest not so much because of her beauty, but because of her good character and courage. While far from ugly, Kristen Stewart certainly does not rival the beauty of Charlize Theron. But Stewart gives a thoroughly adequate performance. Snow White doesn’t actually have many lines. Mainly she just walks around being places, and everybody but the Huntsman recognizes her immediately and rallies to her cause. That’s because she’s Good. And Good conquers Evil. And Ravenna is draining the world of vitality to feed her beauty because she’s Evil. Snow White will restore the world because she’s Good. See?
Charlize Theron is the centerpiece of the movie as Ravenna. Without Ravenna, the film would crumble to dust. She’s really what makes it work. She’s portrayed by the strongest actress, and she has (by far) the best costumes. Interestingly, Ravenna isn’t simply evil, she’s also psychologically damaged (a double threat). It’s hard to imagine why anyone who encountered her wouldn’t immediately try to get out of her way since she’s immensely powerful and emotionally unstable to the point that she frightens her own brother and spends most of her time away from the mirror screaming shrilly and having traumatic flashbacks. In fact, most people do try to get away from Ravenna, so that part of the story checks out. If Snow White hadn’t survived the opening sequence, they could have called the story Everybody Moved.
Ravenna would be an even better character if we learned more of her backstory. How does this magic she has work? Where did the power come from? Was her mother a witch? Where did she pick up the mirror? Theron does what she can, and the results are mostly positive. She is, by far, the best part of the movie.
Overall:
Nothing at all lurks beneath the lovely surface of Snow White and the Huntsman, but the surface is so lovely that the lack of depth almost doesn’t matter. The movie isn’t just pretty to look at, it’s stunning, and the visuals actually advance the plot. Watching the movie, you don’t really feel cheated by the shallow script because the film is just so beautiful, so terrible, so striking. My family enjoyed Snow White in the Huntsman, even my three-year-old daughter who kept her eyes glued to the screen (except when she hid them in fear) the entire time.