Beware the frozen heart...I couldn't get enough of Frozen when it first came out. I watched it near the end of its cycle in the cinemas, when you couldn't even get a half house in the theatre. I didn't really follow it on social media either, so I never knew about the hype train. Until I watched it. I was lucky to have watched it during my school holidays back then. The next month was spent memorising every song in Frozen, then every line. I watched the movie so many times that every line was known to me. Every contour in the characters' voices. Every pause in their speech. Then, as the year progressed, I started memorising them in any languages I could find, and then as I travelled places, I would watch Frozen on the airplanes multiple times in various languages. I trawled the Disney wiki and memorised little bits of trivia, and even added some content and discussions of my own. At present, I have watched Frozen 13 times. However, the last time was 4 years ago, in a non-English language. Unfortunately, I can no longer remember the songs, nor each and every line in the movie. I also watched Disney's live-action Cinderella twice just to see Frozen Fever twice. I didn't even care for Cinderella. This blog is my attempt to revitalise the chatter about Frozen. Those were good times. #fylgi Thoughts after 4 yearsI tell people Frozen hit me in the guts when I first watched it because it destroyed all Disney's own tropes. The love story was completely secondary to the main conflict, which was the conflict between two sisters, one chasing after the other while forever being pushed away. The guy-saves-girl and/or true love's kiss trope was thrown out the window when Anna saved her sister and herself by choosing to sacrifice herself when she threw herself in front of Hans' blade. But looking back on it now, everything I just said after the tropes is powerful in and of itself. The conflict between Anna, who just wants to bring her sister back home and tell her she loves her, and Elsa, who wants to keep her sister a mile away because she loves her, is heart-wrenching. Both are expressing their love for the other, but their methods are squarely contradictory. This is why Anna is the protagonist of this story. She is the one actively seeking to bring her sister back, while her sister basically sits in either her room or her (barren, food-less, empty) ice castle and has mental breakdowns from time to time about how much of a monster she is. That's why it's a little sad that the advertising is often focused on Elsa; but who can blame the marketing team? Anna has a tortured childhood. Elsa has a tortured childhood, and crazy strong ice magic, and a kick-ass solo where she lets it go. Almost makes people think she's the main character in all this, when honestly, she's the most antagonistic. She doesn't just push her sister away, she dumps an ice monster on her, and said ice monster ends up throwing Anna off a cliff. She's your sister. Come on! I feel like this was probably a relic from an earlier storyboard when Elsa was meant to be more evil, but after they made Elsa the tormented emotional refugee she was then, this scene was kept because...lack of better options? Remember that sccene in the trailer when Anna and Kristoff are stuck in a blizzard and Anna says "That's no blizzard. That's my sister." ? Well, that "evil" reveal is another relic, I guess. Maybe they just wanted everyone to think Elsa was a villain, to subvert expectations. Guess it worked. Elsa is a hit. Anna doesn't get enough credit. The SongsHonestly, the songs of Frozen are half-and-half. Some are great and are plot-relevant: "Do You Want To Build To Build A Snowman?", "For the First Time in Forever", "Love is an Open Door", "Let It Go", "For the First Time in Forever (Reprise)". Some are short enough to be not distracting: "Frozen Heart", "Reindeers are Better than People", "In Summer". One is annoying: "Fixer Upper". Notice that the "good" songs are all near the first half of the movie, and happen pretty quickly one after the other. However, in the whole of the second act, the only song is "Fixer Upper", which feels so tacked on, even if it's somewhat relevant (I mean, the trolls really want to set their big boy up and they need enough fanfare). But after so long without a single song, it just felt really unbalanced, and since the song wasn't particularly interesting (to me), I got sick of it pretty fast. Still knew every single word in the lyrics at one point in time though. (sigh) I contrast this to Frozen II (which you can read about here!), which has fewer songs, but basically all of which are plot- or character-relevant. The Frozen II songs have advanced techniques that make non-musically inclined people like me screw up the timings for the words when singing the songs; this is meant to show how Anna and Elsa have matured, how their audience has matured, and in general it's to highlight the more sombre and grown-up tone of Frozen II. The words in Frozen II rhyme less well but mean far more. Listening to those songs, and then looking back at Frozen, makes me dislike the strange songs in Frozen more. This is, though, strangely, not a problem in Frozen: The Musical, because new songs were added in to balance the songs out. While "Fixer Upper" is still there, it's surrounded by other plot-relevant songs so it just seems more like a distraction than a complete tone shift. Subsequent post on Frozen: The Musical to be released soon. Stay tuned! Closing thoughtsOh, this was one of my favourite movies back when I was younger. I still rate it highly, although I'm jaded and can't be bothered to watch this movie again. At its core, it's straightforward. It's a story of two sisters on different paths, and how their paths eventually violent converge at the movie's climax, resulting in the voluntary death of the one who wants nothing more than to be with her sister, and the survival of the one who wants to protect her sister.
It is a reminder that love is powerful. Subsequent rant on Hans upcoming. Stay tuned!
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In the Hall of the Mountain Queen(Mar 2019)
The horizontal sun always Does paint the shattered world better Than it was done. On that high peak Your tempest whirled, and fractals froze And formed a queendom fit for one. In that now lifting storm, what thought you, As you there beheld your magic's Mature form? Were those by its glory Withheld: that door, that knock, that voice, Which frozen hearts could warm? You'd call this the sole choice. Perhaps The price of love is pain, the more pain More the joy. Yet, see - through this Frost-bit domain! - that painѐd love Still runs, nor pain nor love will foil. *This is when the idea for the "Queendom of the Crocus" first came to me. |
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