lilyoftherose

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Moulin Rouge! (2001) dir. Baz Luhrmann

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Cinderella (2015) dir. Kenneth Branagh.

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To think

there was a time I was really sad that the only way to ever hear Lily James sing was to listen to the one song she sang on the Cinderella soundtrack and then a few years later they gave us Lily James as the main character in a musical life is good.

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Ella + Animals Cinderella (2015) dir. Kenneth Branagh

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I suddenly just remembered Kit and Ella’s first meeting and I thought about his instinctive, understanding sympathy, “nor your doing either, I’ll bet”, and the way Ella responds to that sympathy directly and with great vulnerability, not by showing him every scar she’s ever been given, but by showing him the set of principles she lives by that help her endure her pain. “we must simply have courage and be kind, musn’t we.” And I just keep thinking about how much courage it must have taken for her to tell this stranger the deepest secrets of her heart, of how brave it was of her to tell him her mother’s words and show him, in one beautiful simple moment, the most fundamental parts of herself. 

And then I think about how this just shatters Kit, about how he loses his heart to her in one moment, in one instant. About how he doesn’t stand a chance of not falling in love with her because  her integrity and her firmness coupled with her shyness and sweetness just destroy any line of defense he might have had with regard to his heart. And honestly, I just want someone to punch me right in the face.

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Maria! What are some of your favorite things from Cinderella (2015)?

GREAT QUESTION 

Well on the most basic level, it’s just so beautifully made. Kenneth Branagh is a great director on his own but he also surrounds himself with incredible artists. The cinematography, the score, the script, the actors- everything is just so well done and they all work in harmony. There aren’t any aspects that are less well done than others- at least not to me. Everything just sings.

It’s not afraid to be beautiful and colorful and joyous- there is no pretension in this movie that only the dark or gritty or ugly parts of life are true. But it also doesn’t pretend that darkness or sorrow or grief aren’t a part of it too. So its happiness and even its colors feel earned. Its moments of darkness add color and depth to its light. 

It’s a fairytale but it’s not a fantasy. Ella and Kit both get out of situations that are less than ideal- hers is worse than his but still, he didn’t want to marry someone he had just met and didn’t love- and they both end up in a situation as close to perfect happiness as two human beings are ever going to achieve. But it’s still not a fantasy because even though it happens fantastically- there are coaches that are actually pumpkins and spells and magic and fairy godmothers- it doesn’t happen unrealistically. Kit and Ella have real reasons for loving each other and their love story and happy ending unfold because of the kinds of people that they are- it didn’t just happen to them, though it is, and they both recognize it as, a gift. If that makes sense. 

And that’s another thing. They’re both presented as being grounded enough that they don’t need each other. They love each other- a lot!-  but they don’t need each other to be whole. Their sense of selves, their purpose, their ability to live good lives is not dependent on each other. And the movie tells you, pretty explicitly, that if Ella had never gotten her happy ending she would have still been okay. “Though Ella was sad, her spirit was not broken. Her time with the prince would turn into happy, distant memory like those of her mother and father.” A fantasy would have just given Ella Kit as a way out of her pain, but Ella doesn’t need him to be her rescuer or to be the person who makes her world okay again. He is not the one who frees her from the misery she is living in. She has already broken the cycle of abuse and hatred herself because she has refused to participate in it. And because she responds to everything in her world with love, simplicity, gratitude, and patience, she is already at peace despite her pain.

I love that the story only gets richer the more you watch it. It works on that very solid level that all stories for children work on but you don’t grow out of it as you get older. It feels like it grows with you but the childlike delight remains. (I sound like I saw this as a child when obviously I didn’t but it feels like that kind of story?) 

Let’s see, what else. I love the way it subverts so many bad story tropes while also not being heavy-handed or obvious or just making that subversion another trope. Kit doesn’t love Ella because “she’s not like other girls”. Ella doesn’t use violence or anger or a sword in order to prove her strength. Kit actually doesn’t have a bad relationship with his father. They disagree, but they do it respectfully. They love each other and they tell each other that and it’s just so beautiful? Ella is the gentlest person in the movie and she continually sacrifices her own happiness if she believes it can increase someone else’s but she’s also the most powerful and the effects of her kindness and her choices never stop reverberating. Ella forgives her stepmother and while you marvel at her goodness you are struck by the absolute power her forgiveness gives her. There’s just so much!

I love the way it shows you that vicious people are not happy because they lock themselves out of love and being cut off from love is worse than any pains that caused them to lock themselves out in the first place. Ella responded to her pain with more love, Lady Tremaine with less. And so Ella gets her happy ending and Lady Tremaine doesn’t. And that would still be true even if Ella had never married Kit. The only truly unbearable misery is the one we consign ourselves too, the prison of hatred that we choose. Lady Tremaine couldn’t change her losses any more than Ella could change hers, but she lets them embitter her and turn her hard. And the thing is I understand that and I have so much sympathy for that and I think the movie does too, but Ella would have (did!) try to love her and at the end of the day Lady Tremaine is the one locking herself out of that love and healing. And that is the point at which a villain becomes irredeemable- when they choose to be. I hope that eventually she stops doing that though but that might just be me. Well and Ella. Kit would have a harder time I think.

It’s funny and warm but not goofy or childish. There are no talking or singing animals. I cannot tell you how delighted I am by that.

When the Grand Duke is trying to figure more out about Ella and he says “you have to appreciate her efficiency, she went straight for him!” it completely delights me. Because on the one hand, he is completely misunderstanding her and attributing to her much more selfish and mercenary motives than she actually has but on the other hand he’s right because Ella was never coy about Kit and never played hard to get and was just so completely sincere with him right from the beginning, so it’s fitting that her entrance would reflect that. Why wouldn’t she “go straight for him”? Why pretend that isn’t why she’s there? I also think it’s such a neat line because it just highlights how differently Ella thinks vs how people like the Grand Duke think. Her goodness is just so clear and everything else is so murky that the only way to make sense of her for some people is to interpret her goodness through some lens of murkiness. 

Just overall, how this movie truly celebrates beauty, goodness, and love ?? And this is where the fact that it’s a fairytale comes in. Not that real life can’t or shouldn’t be like that (it should be!!) but just that very often, honestly a lOT of the time, beauty, goodness etc. are ignored and passed over and good people are underappreciated while wicked or shallow ones are praised. Cinderella gives you the realism of this for much of the movie. Ella is ignored and under-appreciated- in fact, she suffers much worse than that for her goodness. (Again this movie isn’t a fantasy. She doesn’t charm anyone to love her despite her situation. She can’t literally change anyone’s hearts and neither does she return to wreak some horrible but satisfying revenge- both things a fantasy would do.) But her beauty of body and especially spirit is celebrated in public at a ball where everyone can see her and in the end she becomes queen of everyone there. And to see someone like Ella put front and center, especially after all the times she spent literally sleeping by a dying fire, doing laundry, keeping company with mice, is so satisfying and beautiful. And it’s so important to see and remember that goodness, beauty etc. is what we should be celebrating. It’s personally satisfying too (not for Ella so much who isn’t really thinking about that at all) but for us and for Kit that she finally gets what she deserves and is as admired as she should be. “Believe me, they’re all looking at you.”

Also this:

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I have to tell you a secret that will see you through all the trials that life can offer. Have courage and be kind.

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This was my mother’s. And I’d like to wear it when I go to the palace. It’s almost like taking her with me. Cinderella (2015) dir. Kenneth Branagh

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me in my head: I’m a cold heartless bitch whose lips are as red as the blood of men I’ve slain with my high heels and winged eyeliner. No one can mess with me. 

me irl: *holding back tears to the 2015 Cinderella soundtrack while studying in the library*

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I’m only a girl, not a princess. Lily James as Ella in Cinderella (2015)

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You know what I love the most about Cinderella? (Besides everything?) That when Kit falls in love with Ella it’s never for any other reason than that she’s herself. He’s never like “oh I like this girl because she isn’t like all those other ones.” And I hate that kind of rhetoric. It isn’t romantic at all to love a woman only in comparison to other women or only for the things she isn’t. And it’s funny to me because the script comes so close to doing that sometimes, almost intentionally, but right as it’s about to fall into the trap of “oh she’s different” it turns the moment around. Ella doesn’t know he’s the prince and Kit laughs, obviously delighted, and says “you don’t know who I am!” and you sit there and you wait for that to be the moment where he decides he loves her. Because, you know, it’s so refreshing that this girl doesn’t know he’s royalty and oh my gosh all those other girls are so annoying because they know he’s the prince and gosh can’t they just treat him like a normal human being?! But he doesn’t. And when he talks about her later he never pulls any “it’s so nice not to have to be the prince around her” crap. The fact that she doesn’t know who he is is not the reason he loves her. Which is good because newsflash! screenwriters of the world, that’s a dumb reason!!! Even the princess Chelina moment. When you first see her you think you know where it’s going but it ends up differently. When she sees Ella dancing with Kit, she doesn’t pout or make snarky comments; she smiles and says “who is she?” She’s there simply to show that the Grand Duke/Kit’s dad have definite other plans for Kit marriage-wise not to provide an obnoxious foil to Ella’s sweetness so that you hate her and are happy the prince doesn’t have to marry her.

And then the hunting moment! I love the hunting moment! Half of me was expecting him to say something like “no one else would ever do that! you’re so original! you dare to tell me that I shouldn’t hunt! I like that! what spunk!” but he doesn’t? You can tell he’s moved by her sincerity and passion and there’s delight and wonder on his face but it isn’t at the expense of anyone else. He doesn’t like her only in comparison to those other girls.The moment he falls in love with her, I think, is the moment when she says, “It isn’t so bad really. Others have it worse I’m sure. We must simply have courage and be kind.” That’s the moment where he just completely loses his heart to her. Because she’s being both brave and sincere down to the depths of her soul and he’s powerless against both her goodness and her truthfulness. That’s the reason he falls in love with her. Not because she piques his interest by being a little bit saucy or unexpected. Not because she’s so different or so refreshingly unlike other girls. 

 And I get that when you’re in love you don’t think anyone else is as wonderful as that person; I get that you think they’re one in a million, that you could never be happy with anyone else etc. I get that! But it’s such an obvious thing that articulating it feels stupid and turning it into a comparison thing has always felt wrong to me. Like oh, you only like me because of what I’m not? Or you only like me because I’m different? Then it’s really only novelty you love. Or excitement. And that’s going to wear off and then where will be? If Kit only loved Ella because she treated him like no one ever had– how long was it going to stay exciting and fresh? It wouldn’t. It’s a shallow reason to love somebody and it doesn’t endure. Basically I love it because Ella’s never pitted against another girl or even the idea of other girls. She’s never made out to be lovable only by comparison. Kit loves her genuinely and wholeheartedly because of who she really is, because of her spirit and her goodness, hers! not someone else’s, and not only in light of other’s weaknesses. And that’s beautiful. I love it so much.

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Ella’s “They treat me as well as they are able” in CINDERELLA is one of the most devastating lines in cinematic history

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one of my continuing favorite moments from Cinderella (and believe me, there’s a few) is the part when Ella offers up her room to her stepsisters, and gets booted to the attic. There is certainly a moment where we see her, with her mother’s trinkets pushed and then carefully held in her arms, as Ella steps into attic, and we expect her to break down. I mean, up to this point Ella’s basically been withholding all of her more negative emotions about her family and her father leaving, and so we expect her to sit down and weep because really, that’s the last straw on top of the freaking hay stack.

But no, we’re all wrong. 

Ella sets down her things, and dusts everything off, and she smiles. She says to herself, well, I was just wanting some peace and quiet, and this is the perfect opportunity. Nothing in her seems disappointed, or even hurt. She is just simply happy, almost innocently so, to receive a hidden gift. 

This particular moment always swells my heart with love for her because it is so essential to her core personality. It is this act of seeking out beauty where it is hard to find it, that quickness to respond with joy and grace to something that immediately looks harsh, that reminds me in our own lives that we must be able to respond to things with the ability to accept events for what they are, but while also keeping our need to seek out the hidden light in them, too. Gratitude is, as always, a virtue that I need to work on, but seeing moments like this makes me remember why I must strive towards it still. 

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just once I would like to enter a ballroom in a gorgeous gown while “Who Is She” from the Cinderella 2015 soundtrack plays in the background and everyone is stunned by my ethereal beauty

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Cinderella (2015)

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Ella + hair

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Ella, you have more kindness in your little finger than most people possess in their whole body. Where there is kindness, there is goodness. And where there is goodness, there is magic.