Beau­ty and the Beast

Ram­pant misog­y­ny. Spousal abuse. Sex­u­al frus­tra­tion. Sui­ci­dal depres­sion. Nar­cis­sism. Racism. Destruc­tive parochial­ism. Anti intel­lec­tu­al­ism. Maybe it’s just down to tim­ing and the cur­rent State That We Are In, but this lux­u­ri­ant, spit-shined screen ver­sion of Gabrielle-Suzanne Bar­bot de Villeneuve’s 1740 baroque fable is a Beau­ty and the Beast de nos jours.

Maybe not to the point where it should her­ald a new wave of mil­i­tant­ly politi­cised Dis­ney fea­tures covert­ly espous­ing forth­right lib­er­al val­ues. But these ideas are there, nestling provoca­tive­ly beneath the gos­samer sur­face. They are there for those with the incli­na­tion to grab at them.

What’s inter­est­ing about the film is that it nev­er push­es these weighty themes too stub­born­ly. It nev­er pack­ages them up and presents them, trans­forms them into state­ments. They are implic­it with­in the cen­tral melo­dra­ma whose prime focus is to make the view­er think and feel that romance is the be-all and end-all of this film, and of life itself. Vet­er­an direc­tor Bill Con­don clear­ly hasn’t opt­ed to make a polit­i­cal film, or even bring a per­son­al touch to the mate­r­i­al. He seems more like an avatar than a direc­tor. It’s more that in sell­ing a sto­ry which is so nat­u­ral­ly loaded with rich, sub­tex­tu­al good­ness, this vital added val­ue is hard­wired into the celluloid.

As with most so-called ​“inno­cent” enter­tain­ment which dares to dab­ble in the prac­tice of actu­al­ly say­ing some­thing about how we live (and how we per­haps should live), you do wor­ry there will be trolls lurk­ing in the dig­i­tal under­growth and wait­ing to pounce. How long will it be before futuro-Nazi foot-sol­diers are direct­ing hate­ful invec­tive towards Emma Watson’s pro­gres­sive pop­pet, Belle, who rejects the oppres­sive, mus­cle­bound ass­hat Gas­ton (Luke Evans, on fine form) in favour of book­ish emo-gar­goyle, Beast (Dan Stevens)? But hey, would it also be too cyn­i­cal to think that light­ing a small fire under the cra­zies could result in a tidy mar­ket­ing surge for the film and con­nect it to an audi­ence look­ing for more than super­fi­cial razzle-dazzle?

For bet­ter and for worse, Wat­son appears like the per­fect choice to play Belle in a film about a woman’s right to choose her des­tiny. She has the rugged com­port­ment of a weary Land Girl, and her dialled-back per­for­mance resists the doe-eyed com­pli­ance that is often required of the clas­sic ​‘Dis­ney Princess’. She is a woman of let­ters, ded­i­cat­ed to stu­dious activ­i­ties. She skips through her vil­lage with a dis­tressed hard­back, in qui­et search of intel­lec­tu­al equals. Her pangs of desire for Beast even­tu­al­ly rise to the fore when he take her on a tour of his vast per­son­al library. The mes­sage of this film: books before looks.

As a per­former, you could maybe accuse Wat­son of being a tad cold, but frankly it works for the role. There’s the sense that she’s in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion rather than just being swept along on pure impulse. She doesn’t expe­ri­ence a con­ve­nient change in char­ac­ter and end up bow­ing to sub­servience. One of loveli­est moments is a call-back to a din­ner sequence where she sips soup dain­ti­ly from a spoon while Beast aggres­sive­ly dunks his face into the bowl. Instead of either accept­ing a cor­rect way to eat soup, they silent­ly devise a method that sat­is­fies both parties.

For­mal­ly, the film is func­tion­al rather than rad­i­cal. It glances back as far as the 1991 ani­mat­ed ver­sion rather than to Jean Cocteau’s mag­i­cal, erot­ic mas­ter­piece from 1946. If any­thing, the whis­tle-friend­ly operetta show tunes push the film clos­er to what feels like a filmed stage adap­ta­tion than a full-on cin­e­mat­ic expe­ri­ence, which works in its favour. For a tale of such brac­ing sim­plic­i­ty, the cam­era does move too much, always creep­ing or swoop­ing where a sim­ple, rest­ful still shot would’ve suf­ficed. The film’s most mov­ing instances are Beast’s muf­fled expres­sions while react­ing to dia­logue or glanc­ing out mourn­ful­ly over the icy tundra.

This is unapolo­get­i­cal­ly a ​“Dis­ney” film, and while that might be off-putting for those han­ker­ing for orig­i­nal and sur­pris­ing cin­e­ma, it’s fas­ci­nat­ing that the stu­dio has devel­oped this unique imprint for them­selves. It’s become a byword for a cer­tain type of robust high qual­i­ty. One thing you can say about their pro­duc­tions is that they sel­dom look cheap. They leave you with the impres­sion that, what­ev­er cre­ative deci­sions have been made, they are exe­cut­ed in the most effec­tive way possible.

Some­times it’s the deci­sions them­selves that are ques­tion­able, but the reac­tion of watch­ing a film like Beau­ty and the Beast is that nev­er allows the view­er to ques­tion, or even think about, the val­ue of its tech­ni­cal cre­den­tials. It’s a film that is entire­ly com­fort­able in its own body, which is both pleas­ing and fitting.