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The Appropriate Tune: 'Matador' by Los Fabulosos Cadillacs
On such a literary-minded Marathon it only makes sense that we would get at least one movie based on a fairy tale. I mean that’s what you’d call meat and potatoes storytelling, before the novel, before the population was mostly literate, fairy tales were a way to impart knowledge onto your descendents, and unlike many aspects of our past they’ve managed to stick around. Not as the cautionary tales and social lessons they once were, but as fuel for other stories, comics, video games, and of course films. Which is fine, unless you’re a goth I think we can agree it’s better to exist than to not exist.
Released in 2012, Blancanieves was written and directed by Pablo Berger and produced by Berger, Jerome Vidal and Ibon Cormenzana, based on the story Snow White attributed to the Brothers Grimm. It’s the turn of the century in Spain, and everybody is talking about the great matador Antonio Villalarta and his lovely wife Carmen (Macarena Garcia, who also plays their adult daughter). That is until the fateful day when Antonio was gored, leaving him a quadriplegic, and his wife died in childbirth. Pretty sad, but it gets even sadder when Antonio falls under the influence of the beautiful (and evil) Encarna (Maribel Verdu), who completely takes over Antonio’s life and his fortune. Then it gets even sadder when that little girl’s guardian and grandmother dies and she is forced to move in with her invalid father and her evil stepmother, where she’s constantly abused and treated like a slave. But just wait until little Carmen grows up and we start throwing murder into the mix! It’s like the Coachella of depression this time around!
The first thing you notice when watching Blancanieves is the visuals. Pablo Berger doesn’t just take the Snow White story and place it in the 1920’s, he goes full on 20’s tribute and makes this a black and white silent film. We’ve seen a couple silent film revivals on this blog, the first one that comes to mind being Call of Cthulhu, but this might be the best looking of the bunch. The costumes, the architecture, the camera effects, it all feels like it was lifted directly from the period, while maintaining the crisp imagery of modern cinema. It’s not fully visual storytelling, you can tell there’s certain parts where Berger couldn’t figure out a way to get info across without a bunch of dialogue cards, but I certainly appreciate the effort, as this didn’t have to be a silent film at all.
The other thing you might do is question who this film is for, because it’s certainly not children. I’m not even talking about the violence, although this film is chock full of that, because everyone and their mother are aware of how the Grimm’s fairy tales were a lot darker than Disney would have you believe at this point. I’m talking about the BDSM references, the sexual assault, and the general air of hopelessness that seems out of place. Where the message of the original story was that as long as you’re a good person things will work out in the end, the message of Blancanieves appears to be that life is one long parade of suffering and that you can’t even rely on death to give you any sense of relief. Which might be more ‘realistic’ I suppose, but then most folk don’t really read fairy tales for the sense of realism do they? If I wanted to feel bad I’d just look in a mirror, I don’t need a Snow White movie to do it for me.
Ultimately though I’m giving Blancanieves a mild recommendation. While I wasn’t in the right headspace for it, the film does look great and seeing the classic fairy reinterpreted through a modernist lens is sure to be appealing to some. You don’t even have to worry about subtitles, what more could you ask of a foreign film? Besides a free cheeseburger after every viewing.
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