If you followed any of the news and advertising surrounding Brave, you will no doubt know that it is the first Pixar film to feature a female protagonist, thus shattering what had, until now, been exclusively a boy’s club (which also extends to the director’s chair, as all Pixar films, from Toy Story, to Finding Nemo, to WALL•E, have been helmed by men). The film centers on Merida (Kelly Macdonald), a feisty medieval Scottish princess whose personality is aptly literalized by her shock of wild, unruly red hair, which cascades all around her in disordered, unbrushable waves and curls (her locks are like a pointed rebuke to Rapunzel’s perfectly conditioned mane in Disney’s misleadingly titled Tangled a few years back). Merida prizes her freedom and resents the constant attempts by her dignified mother, Queen Elinor (Emma Thompson), to shape her into a “proper” princess by quelling her boisterousness, independence, and fierce love of archery (“A princess should not have weapons,” she is told, among other things).

Things comes to a head when Elinor, following custom, forces Merida into a constrictive gown and offers her up as the potential wife for one of three goofy suitors, each of whom hails from a different clan. Merida doesn’t much like being auctioned off, whether it be for political gain or just to maintain tradition, and she rebels, riding off into the forest, at which point Brave launches off into an entirely different and unexpected direction, one that is substantially better than the rather predictable, albeit visually stunning, opening reel (as well as Pixar’s last effort, Cars 2, the closest approximation of a bad movie the studio has yet to produce).

(Those who want to remain in the dark regarding the film’s second half should duck out now, as reading about the film’s subsequent developments might seriously undermine its pleasurably wacky, but emotionally rewarding detours.)

In the woods, Merida is led by a will-o’-the-wisp to the house of an elderly witch (Julie Walters), from whom she purchases a spell to “change” her mother in the hopes that she will drop her insistence on Merida’s impending nuptials. The spell does change her mother, but not in the way she expected. Instead of causing her to change her mind, it instead changes her physically into a towering grizzly bear. The singular weirdness of this unexpected development is at first played for laughs, as Elinor, ever the proper queen, has an extraordinarily difficult time adjusting to her new body—not just the enormous size, but also her inability to speak except in bearish grunts, moans, and roars. Things are infinitely complicated by the fact that Merida’s enormous father, Fergus (Billy Connolly), lost his leg to a giant bear when Merida was a child and has been seeking revenge ever since. Thus, Merida must keep her parents separated while trying to find the witch in order to return her mother to human form (to keep things ramped up, she has a two-day window to reverse the spell, or else it becomes permanent).

Screenwriters Mark Andrews, Steve Purcell, Brenda Chapman, and Irene Mecchi (working from an original story by Chapman, who was also the film’s original director before she was booted from the production over creative differences) use the film’s magical turn of events to shift its focus from a rather pedestrian rehashing of familiar Disney tropes about young princess rebellion (replete with rather insipid Celtic-themed pop tunes that feel like the very epitome of cinematic laziness) into a genuinely moving exploration of a complex mother-daughter relationship, one that is both vexed and enhanced by the fact that both Merida and Elinor are strong, determined women. The animators do wonders with anthropomorphism by cleverly grafting human emotions onto a bear’s face and body movements without losing their essentially animal-like nature; Elinor’s humanity shines through her eyes, which are often wide and pleading, an atypical emotion for the usually stately and decorous queen.

The story’s emotional suspense hinges on the threat of Elinor disappearing completely into her animal body, and the subtle shifts in the human/bear dynamic are one of the film’s most enthralling and poignant attributes. The scene in which Elinor the bear attempts to set up and have a proper breakfast with Merida is both hilarious in its disastrousness but also indelibly sad, as we recognize the pain Elinor feels in being unable to express herself in her animal body. Just as Merida has latched onto tomboyishness and independence as her mode of self-expression, Elinor clings to her dignity and poise, both of which she is now denied. That the film is able to take the very characteristics of her mother that were at first impediments to Merida’s happiness and turn them into attributes we yearn for her mother to reclaim is testament to how surprisingly complex and moving Brave really is.

Copyright ©2012 James Kendrick

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