I often hear people complain about a movie not being “realistic” enough, or being too “farfetched” or “unbelievable.” As if a movie must, at least on its surface, portray life as it really is. Heaven forbid we should stray too far from reality – let’s bring it back down to earth as quickly as possible and keep it dark and serious.You would certainly have to come to that conclusion if you were to base your judgments on what the motion picture Academy thinks makes for a good movie. Just looking back at the list of nominees for Best Picture over the last 20 years (100 nominees), you would be hard-pressed to find even five nominees in the comedy genre, and a whopping three musicals: Beauty and the Beast (1991), Moulin Rouge (2001), and Chicago (2002). There is no question that there is a definite bias toward the dramatic and serious, if not actually dark and depressing – I need only cite the last four Best Picture winners as examples: No Country for Old Men (2007), The Departed (2006), Crash (2005), and Million Dollar Baby (2004) – no “feel good” movies to worry about here!
I contend that it doesn’t necessarily take a dark or depressing movie to deliver a serious message. In fact, I would contend that to deliver such a message while still entertaining the viewer may in fact require greater skill as a writer or filmmaker, not less.
Such is the case with Enchanted. It has quickly become one of my favorite all-time movies, joining my list which includes among others, Mary Poppins (1964), which was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won five. That was back in the day when such achievement was recognized and before Hollywood took an obvious turn to the dark side.
Enchanted as a whole pays tribute to several of the great Disney classics, including Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, The Little Mermaid, and Beauty and the Beast. The casual viewer may even miss the numerous visual and dialogue references to these movies which are more obvious to veteran Disney afficionados.
With an absolutely brilliant performance by Amy Adams, Princess Giselle is forced to leave her fairy tale world and enter the real world. She quickly discovers that the real world has long since forgotten her idealistic views of love and marriage. After encountering a couple in the midst of a divorce negotiation, where one day they’re together and the next day they’re separated forever, she exclaims: “What sort of an awful place is this?” The awful place happens to be our modern-day, sin-cursed world of selfish human beings. It is the world described by the apostle Paul in the last days as full of people who are “lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving…” (2 Timothy 3). His list goes on, but you get the idea. It is into this world that Giselle in her innocence finds herself.
If the story were to end there, we could add it to the list of depressing movies I mentioned above (and perhaps Enchanted would have garnered a Best Picture nomination after all). Fortunately for us, though, there is still a glimmer of hope to be found in an otherwise dark world. Giselle at one point angrily and rightfully chastises Robert for his negative outlook on both her future and his own. She eventually gets him to realize that it doesn’t have to be that way for everyone – that true love can exist and does endure for those who simply decide to make it so.
So cynics beware! That tug on your heartstrings that you feel when you watch Enchanted is a reminder that there does exist a real, perfect world that our hearts long for and to which those of us whose hope is secure in Christ shall return at the end of our days. You see, there is a real prince who has slain the dragon, and will one day come riding on his white horse to take us back to his castle. There is a real love story with a real happy ending, and we are living in it right now! Yes, today we face challenges, cynicism, and brokenness in the world we live in, but that’s where faith comes in. Our faith is in the God who has promised us a real happily ever after. We agree with Paul that “our present sufferings are not worthy to be compared to the glory that shall be revealed in us” (Romans 8:18). We anxiously look forward to the day when “the dwelling of God is with men, and he will live with them. They will be his people, and God himself will be with them and will be their God. He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death, or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the old order of things has passed away” (Revelation 21:3-4). That is the fairy tale ending that awaits us; except in this case, it’s no fairy tale – it’s real.
But until that day, Enchanted reminds us we can still experience true love when we commit unequivocally and sacrificially to one another, despite the challenges that life may bring. And in so doing we can show the world that there really is a better way than what our fallen, cynical world says we have to settle for.
