Blancanieves

Blancanieve (Snow White) is in every sense one of the best films of 2012. Coming directly in the footsteps of Oscar winner The Artist, this is another film that proves that Silent Film is not a derogatory term but rather leaves us to bring more not less of ourselves to what is a stunning film.

Where Blacanieve triumphs is in its storytelling, its acting, and yes, its melodrama, which here works and makes us feel like we are really watching a Spanish film from the birth of Spanish cinema - the casting of the extras, and the attention to detail just adds to this sensation - and it really is a good watch from beginning to end.

I used to watch films all the time, now I find most are so generic, uninspiring, and just plain dull, that I have almost lost the desire - but then you see a film like this and it restores your faith - a simply excellent film about love, passion, jealousy, and sadness.

Silent, black and white, expressionist, virtuoso in his classically vintage mise en scene, "Blancanieves" is a triumph of real cinema and invention, folk culture and Iberian poetry, a post-modern masterpiece in which the aesthetic of silent cinema – with its quotes and its expressive forms, the single power of pictures and musical score – it's not only an end, as it has been for the contemporary and more exalted "The Artist" (in which retro style was justified by the homage to old Hollywood), but a mean, a perfect mean, to tell a story: the usual one, by Grimm's brothers tiredly taken to screens so many times in so different ways, but here completely twisted, tipped over, in a Gothic, Spanish and extravagant version where Snow White and seven dwarfs are toreros, the set is Seville between '10s and '20s, and the usual Disney fable hearts and flowers go to hell in benefit of a dark tonality, a black humor and a grotesque taste which unchains an unstoppable series of stylistic, comical, poetic inventions, unpredictable as sensational. Under the aegis of a deep patriotic identity, "Blancanieves" has the rhythm of a corrida, the passion of a flamenco, the blood of the arena, the twists of circus and the weight of jealousy, of love duel, which is heart and root of Spanish romanticism. It's a modern "Carmen" with Oedipus complex, tuned with "guitara" and castanets, and painted with the oldest cinema aesthetic, close-ups, gags, depth of field, lights and darks of great silent cinema, here in its maximal expression, without any self-satisfaction at all. It's not a divertissement, and not a simple homage, not a pastiche: it's like a film should be, simple, dry, moving, as cinema in its beginning. Cinephile mannerism of Pablo Berger doesn't make lose the film in a style exercise, but helps to tell a black fairy tale, out of time, revolutionary and anarchic, which couldn't be represented some way else. A bond of immediate emotion and narrative synthesis, which discovers in the arena a theater of all life sensation range: laugh, crying, show, anguish, childhood lightness and horrid adults' cruelty, the weight of past and memories, ghosts and returns, a little antique world in which good and evil, hate and love, jealousy and solidarity, clash and overturn in front of an enraptured, manipulated audience who asks for more, who wants to be thrilled, who gets touched, who has fun, and in the end asks grace for the bull. And, on the very last scene, cries for masterpiece!

The professional reviews for this were so ecstatic that I may have been a bit over-hyped, and felt a twinge of disappointment in seeing it, which is not to say I didn't enjoy it

Entertaining and beautifully made, this is another modern black & while silent film, this one an adult re-telling of the Snow White myth. There's no denying the technical virtuosity on display, and the ways that film-maker Berger finds to update the tale to Spain in the 1920s, center the story around bullfighting, and still stay true to the original story are clever and sometimes very amusing.

What was missing for me was a deeper layer of emotion, I appreciated and respected the film, but it was too much a fairy tale for me to believe in it, yet too real for me to be carried away into a fantasy. That said, it's good enough that I will gladly re-visit it.

Snow White and the Huntsman and Mirror Mirror were not the only two Snow White-inspired films of last year. Spanish cinema goers were treated to their very own version of the Brothers Grimm fairy tale that was directed by Pablo Berger who could have been inspired by the success of the French-American silent film, The Artist, as his version of the tale is also a silent one.

Shot in glorious black-and-white (as was The Artist), the film looks and feels like an actual film from the silent era. The simple style of Blancanieves hearkens back to the silent era of film and Berger has created a fanciful homage to those wonderful films of several yesteryears ago that have inspired countless filmmakers ever since.

Berger's unique vision of Snow White takes place in southern Spain in the 1920s and features actress Maribel Verdu (Pan's Labyrinth, Y Tu Mama Tambien) as this version's wicked stepmother. Verdu's Encarna loves her husband's fame and fortune (he is a paralyzed bullfighter whom she met in the hospital as his nurse) but loathes him and his daughter, Carmen. As the story goes, the young Carmen/Snow White (Macarena Garcia) flees the evil clutches of her mother and finds herself helped out along the way by a band of little people who travel the countryside and perform as a novelty act. Carmen finds a talent as a novelty, female bullfighter herself ... and her newfound fame attracts the attention and wrath of Encarna. And, well ... we know the story.

Berger has ingeniously and believable captured this tale in this setting ... and it all works. The over-the-top theatrics of the stars (over-emoting for lack of sound) is spot-on and there are no weak-links in this production. The sets and costumes are lavish. The blacks and whites are sumptuous and beautiful. By Berger choosing to incorporate some of the darker elements of a classic Grimm tale, he has made this version the most successful of last year's three Snow White re-tellings.

This is the fairest one of them all.

Blanca Nieves, or Snow White, is a variation on the old fable, with bullfighting being a major thematic difference. A great matador is seen praying in front of a statue of the Virgin Mary, as he awaits is battle with el toro. He enters to a worshippig crowd, which includes his pregnant wife cheering him on. Of course, things go horribly wrong and he ends up in a wheelchair and his better half has a difficult childbirth. A daughter is born and she winds up at an estate with a wicked stepmother, as in the original tale. This is all in black and white and it is also a silent film. I was reluctant to watch it, but once I got used to the placards used for dialogue, I was carried along by the story. Carmen, the little girl, grows up and circumstances bring her to a group of; you guessed it, seven bullfighters. They are little people, in keeping tradition with Grimm's book. I won't give away the ending, but I was thoroughly entertained by Blanca Nieves. The cinematography is beautiful and the acting excellent throughout. Be open minded, as far as watching a silent movie is concerned, and you will not be disappointed.