Blancanieves

If it hadn't been for Michel Hazanavicius’ outstanding, award-dominating 2011 film The Artist, perhaps Pablo Berger's Blancanieves (2012) would have received more of the attention it deserves. The film earned critical acclaim, winning the Special Jury Prize at the San Sebastián International Film Festival and ten Goya Awards, the Spanish equivalent to the Oscars. Despite being Spain's 85th Academy Awards official submission to Best Foreign Language category, Blancanieves failed to be shortlisted. The film, based on the Brothers Grimm's classic fairy tale "Snow White," is genuinely enjoyable. Considering silent film is somewhat of a dead art, in the way that Sanskrit and Latin are dead languages, Blancanieves is a surprisingly brilliant film. Though there is no dialogue, the actors’ emotive faces are just as telling as words. There are occasional intertitles to express dialogue, but they’re few and far between. The fact that Blancanieves is so stimulating is a testament to the craft of director Pablo Berger, as well as the cast and crew. Despite harking back to a bygone era of film, Blancanieves turns out to be a simple yet remarkably great story even in 2013, a time in which most movies are filled to the brim with special effects and viewed with 3-D glasses. Blancanieves returns the audience to the nostalgia of truly going to the cinema.

Unlike the tale of Snow White that most audiences have become familiar with, Blancanieves allows us even greater insight into the titular character, otherwise known as Carmen (Macarena García). Her mother, Carmen de Triana (Inma Cuesta), died in labor. Her father Antonio Villalta (Daniel Giménez Cacho) is a famous torero who was left crippled after being mauled by a bull in the film's opening scenes. Carmen was raised by her grandmother (Ángela Molina) until her death. She is sent to live with her father and his wife at their grand estate. Maribel Verdú, known for her roles in Y tu mamá támbien (Alfonso Cuarón, 2001) and El laberinto del fauno (Guillermo del Toro, 2006), makes for a great wicked stepmother, this film's take on the evil queen. Encarna is ruthless; in one scene, she serves Carmen her pet chicken Pepe. She also has quirks of her own. Carmen spies Encarna and the butler Genaro engaged in some light sadomasochism. He is the one directed to have Carmen killed upon Villalta's death. Carmen later meets "los enanitos toreros" – the dwarf bullfighters – and becomes a bullfighting star of her own, but not before Encarna can intervene. The film ends on a more somber note than, for example, the Disney film Snow White and the Seven Dwarves (1937).

The Spanish setting of Blancanieves gives the tale a unique and refreshing spin. Set in 1920s Andalusia, the autonomous community of Spain in which bullfighting is still most popular, the film takes on all sorts of possibilities. This, of course, brings the torero motif into the picture, but also everything that comes with that. Carmen herself is the embodiment of Andalusian culture. There is the high-class nobility of bullfighting in her blood, as well as the Romani infuences of her mother. Not only is Carmen inspired by her father's legacy, but she is inspired by a single her mother recorded that has gypsy guitars, fingersnapping, handclapping, and a dance. This Spanish-flavored take on "Snow White" is a lot more pleasing than other remakes that came out in the same year, such as the Julia Roberts film Mirror, Mirror (Tarsem Singh, 2012) or the Kristen Stewart-starring Snow White and the Huntsman (Rupert Sanders, 2012) – although Charlize Theron made a great Evil Queen. Blancanieves is funny and sad, light-hearted and deep, a comedy and a drama that will win over both hopeless romantics and passionate cinephiles.

Female, but not Feminist: Gender in "Zero Dark Thirty"

While gender is not directly at the center of the 2012 motion picture Zero Dark Thirty, it plays an integral role in analysis of the film. The controversial film was directed by Kathryn Bigelow, whose other credits include 2009's The Hurt Locker. This film was lauded by contemporary critics and received a number of awards and nominations, including the Academy Award for Best Picture. Bigelow became the first and only female to receive an award for Best Director, ironically beating her ex-husband James Cameron (Titanic, Avatar). Much of the attention given to the film stemmed from the fact that it was a war film helmed by a female director, a rarity in Hollywood (not to discredit Bigelow's work).

Zero Dark Thirty recreates, or at least attempts to recreate, much of this success. Like The Hurt Locker, the film focuses on U.S. military operations. With Zero Dark Thirty, Bigelow controversially focuses on the 10-year manhunt for Osama bin Laden. The film was No. 1 at the Box Office and received five Academy Award nominations. Zero Dark Thirty is an example of a film with a "reverse gaze." That is, the movie does not employ the "male gaze," which puts the audience into the point of view of a straight male. Unlike The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty is not just directed by a woman, but it also places a woman at the forefront of its plot.

Maya, portrayed by Academy Award nominee and Golden Globe winner Jessica Chastain, is an outstanding CIA analyst who is surrounding by alpha males. Maya seems uncomfortable with the film's initial scenes of intense torture during interrogation. Despite her soft-spoken, delicate voice and feminine demeanor, Maya is described as a "killer." Still, her colleagues refer to her as a "girl" and seem reluctant to give Maya the responsibility that she needs to carry out her mission. It is not until Maya aggressively demands it that she is given full responsibility.

I would not describe Zero Dark Thirty as a feminist film simply because it has a female protagonist. Maya must assert her own "masculinity" in order to get what she wants. However, this is potentially realistic for many women in patriarchal environments. For Bigelow, this may be a reflection of her position in the male-dominated film industry. Based on my own conversations with females and LGBTQ-identified individuals in the military, it holds true for the armed forces. Kristin Beck, a Navy SEAL and a member of the elite SEAL Team 6 that captured bin Laden, later came out as transgender and wrote about her experiences about the military in a memoir entitled Warrior Princess.

More than Horror in "The Devil's Backbone"

While El espinazo del diablo (Guillermo del Toro, 2001) is often placed under the "horror" genre, to label it as such feels misleading. When I think of the horror genre, I think of slasher films and possessed children. While children are at the core of El espinazo del diablo , there are many layers within the film that make it much more than simply a horror film. Emotion permeates at the core of El espinazo del diablo. In addition to its thriller nature, the film, set in the midst of the Spanish Civil War, is both historical and melancholic.

El espinazo del diablo is in many ways a poignant film. The story unfolds at a corrupt and remote orphanage. Carlos (Fernando Tielve), the orphanage's most recent addition, is innocence personified. As Enrique Ajuria Ibarra suggests in his analysis of the film, the ghost is emblematic for the national trauma that Spain faced in the 1930s. Carlos is haunted by the apparition of a ghost, but he does not understand what he is seeing. In many shots, the ghost is in the same place as the deactivated bomb that looms over the orphanage from the courtyard. Carlos understands neither the ghost nor the war, both of which are silenced. The tragedies that affect the orphanage are sad and understated, a subtlety often lost in the horror genre.

The ghost in El espinazo del diablo is not a typically grotesque ghost that would be found in many horror films. The ghost is the apparition of Santi, a young boy that disappeared from the orphanage a year prior to Carlos' arrival. Santi is still very human and simply aims to bring light to his death. He leads Carlos to the answers that surround his mysterious disappearance, simultaneously shedding light on a number of horrors committed by the living.

It would be foolish to suggest that there are not elements of horror in del Toro's El espinazo del diablo, but it would be equally foolish to deny that the film is much more than horror as mainstream America has come to understand it. The horrors in El espinazo del diablo are not particularly gruesome or shocking to the eye, but they get the viewer at the heart and mind.