Of course, Merida easily bests her would-be suitors, turning defiantly to her mother to gloat. Elinor is horrified at her daughter’s impudence. When, through dumb luck, the third suitor aces the archery test, the joking stops, and Merida announces that she will be firing arrows for her own hand. Apparently Merida shares not only her father’s passion, physical prowess, and fearlessness, but his lack of tact as well. In fact, Merida and her father take turns quietly mocking them from the royal stage as Elinor scolds both of them.
Not surprisingly, none of the boys turn out to be much of archer.
When her father announces that Merida, as princess, gets to choose what form the contest will take, she does not hesitate to blurt out in a loud voice, “Archery! Archery!”Īs the suitors step forth to demonstrate their skill they receive overblown and obviously misleading introductions from their fathers. A sullen Merida is non-plussed and chafes at being put in a tight and constricting dress by her mother. Soon the clan patriarchs arrive with their sons (and entourages), and the competition for Merida’s hand begins. The suitors are merely the Macguffin (in one case, the literal Macguffin) who have no significance to the plot except for driving action forward. We have been tipped off that the central conflict in the story will have nothing to do with the would-be suitors. The clans’ names are Dingwall, Macintosh and Macguffin–perhaps not the most subtle screenwriting but certainly good for a few laughs. We then find out that, to preserve unity among the four clans, Merida must be married off to the firstborn of one of the other families. The brother in question seeks out a witch to give him the strength of ten men, and soon he brings discord and division to the once peaceful kingdom, which remains to the present day. The brothers lived harmoniously together until the fateful day when one of them began to crave more for himself. We listen as Elinor tells her daughter legends about the past, in particular the legend of how the “four clans” descended from four sons of a single king. As a number of reviewers have noted, Fergus may formally be called king but the real power behind the throne sits with Elinor. Which doesn’t stop Elinor from expecting her to be every bit as much the political and diplomatic power-broker in the kingdom that she herself is. She clearly takes more after her father than her mother. Left to her own devices, Merida would do as her father later jokes, AKA “stay single and ride on a horse at dawn, firing arrows while her hair blows wild in the wind.” Merida is much less interested in royal decorum than she is in scaling craggy cliffs and drinking from secret waterfalls, and she lacks neither the physical prowess or warrior’s confidence to do so. Indeed, as has been noted elsewhere, the mother-daughter relationship lies at the heart of this film. When a killer bear attacks the village, his point is unintentionally proven.Īfter the title sequence, we flash forward several years, and Merida has grown into a young woman who bristles at the micromanaging concerns of her mother. Fergus notes that his daughter clearly loves the gift and that anyone and everyone should be able to defend themselves. Elinor’s husband Fergus has given Merida a bow and arrow, a gift that Elinor does not believe is appropriate for a clan princess. At the opening of the film, for instance, we find young princess Merida playing hide and seek with her mother Elinor. This is not to say story doesn’t contain any of the trappings of the rote princess story.
Fortunately, Brave is a much better film than any of the cookie-cutter examples with which it might be confused. It’s a set up which, in less capable hands, could result in yet another recycling of the Dreamworks’ “be true to yourself” mantra or Disney’s own set of princess-genre bromides. Superficially, at least: the protagonist Merida is an impetuous red-haired princess who feels shackled by tradition and tribal expectation. With Brave, the people that brought us the Toy Story trilogy– arguably the greatest film trilogy originally conceived as a story for the screen–have given us a movie that, at first glance, runs the risk of being confused with the work of a more simple-minded studio. Now in its 17th year of box office activity, Pixar may have entered into chronological adolescence, but the studio is far from becoming a brazen teenager who’s unaware of the past. Have a great Fourth and we’ll see you back here on Thursday: Just in time for Independence Day, a wonderful (if spoiler-heavy) review of Pixar’s latest from resident animation guru Jeremiah Lawson.
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