Snow White and the Huntsman: The Fairest Feminist of Them All

What's that mirror talking about? No one is fairer than Charlize Theron. Unless we're talking inner beauty—which is exactly what this movie is about.


The underlying message of Snow White and the Huntsman, the darkly re-imagined, thrilling new spin on the classic fairy tale, is that focus on and insecurity over one’s physical appeal to men is poison to a woman’s soul. That’s hardly a news flash—feminists and good mothers have been preaching this for ages, but movies, with their emphasis on genetic lottery winners, tend to steadily undermine the message even when supposedly celebrating it. When’s the last time you thought the wicked stepmother or evil queen could defeat the heroine within the shallow auspices of a beauty contest? This Snow White, albeit 10 minutes too long and loaded with the standard action sequences of 21st century summer, feels excitingly progressive because it actually represents the victory of inner beauty. Not to cast aspersions on the loveliness of Kristen Stewart, but I believe—or hope—that’s the result of an intentionally bold move by first-time director Rupert Sanders in terms of casting his two female leads.

The impossibly beautiful—and youthful—Charlize Theron plays the wicked stepmother and sorceress, Queen Ravenna, who appears first in the guise of a victim, supposed chattel of a rogue (magical) army invading the kingdom of Snow White’s widowed father, King Magnus (Noah Huntley). She quickly suckers him into marrying her. Beauty is her power and her curse—she seethes with resentment for the male response to her glory and offs the poor fool before consummation. Little Snow is tossed into a tower prison. About 10 years later, when Snow White—played by Kristen Stewart, hair dyed black, lips stained red, skin as pale as a Cullen’s—comes of age, Ravenna’s magic mirror dares to tell her Snow White is the fairest of them all. Ravenna will have to kill Snow and consume her heart in order to reclaim her title.

(READ: TIME talks to the Huntsman—Chris Hemsworth)

Mirror, mirror, who is your manufacturer and where might they process returns? Theron glows even when Ravenna’s magical powers are waning and she’s allegedly looking haggard. Dressed by costume designer Coleen Atwood in fantastically over-the-top numbers worthy of the best days of Alexander McQueen, Theron is a goddess, a breathtaking piece of human perfection. You can see why a judgmental mirror would tell Mirror, Mirror’s wicked stepmother Julia Roberts that lovely young Lily Collins, as rose-like and Disney-beautiful as they come, had the edge. But the mirror in Snow White and the Huntsman is addressing something deeper than pillowy lips and even features. What makes Stewart’s Snow White fairer is what is inside her, humanity, empathy and character. Snow’s mother wished for a child (seen in prologue) to mimic a rose she found blooming in winter—its beauty, but more than anything, its strength, a description never mentioned in Grimm. Which is the essence of Snow White and the Huntsman’s Snow, who leaps into raw sewage, then a churning sea and plunges into an enchanted forest to escape and rally her people with the passionate cry, “Who will be my brother?”

The men Snow encounters, with the exception of Ravenna’s freakily coiffed brother (Sam Spruell), who has a pervy interest in her, and the world’s worst Louise Brooks hairdo, aren’t immediately dazzled by the girl. The Huntsman (Thor’s Chris Hemsworth), a hunk nursing the heartbreak of his wife’s death, agrees to help her, but is largely unimpressed. He slices off the bottom of Snow’s dress, fashioning her a more travel-worthy tunic and when she looks taken aback, sneers, “Don’t flatter yourself.” It’s only when he sees the curious connection she has with a troll that the Huntsman starts to regard her as anything but a hapless girl. In another nod to a more modern heroine, their attraction builds slowly (especially considering Hemsworth could have chemistry with a potted plant).



Read more: http://entertainment.time.com/2012/05/31/step-monster-snow-white-and-the-huntsman/#ixzz1wewW5KpT