REVIEW - BLANCANIEVES

The third of three Snow White films made in 2012, and the best by a country mile, and then the Atlantic Ocean after that. How much we movie-watchers rely on dialogue! And how little, when artlessly employed, it actually achieves. The Snow White story will be new to so few, but what scant amount of information is not fully transmitted via other means of communication is delivered to us by use of dialogue cards. And then our eyes return to the image, in resplendent black and white, rich in detail and beauty and, yes, trickery. This is no solemn homage to silent film, but a joyous celebration of its cinematic capabilities. Every shot is alone worthy of individual note, for its storytelling properties and/or its artistic quality. And every note on the sublime soundtrack, from the lush sounds of a symphonic orchestra utilised for its greatest virtues, to the entrancing traditional acoustic guitar, peerlessly evocative. Melodrama like this needs to be embraced entirely, and writer / director Pablo Berger is so generous that he doesn't waste a second of film, working every frame for all it's worth and yet never even nudging the line separating sincerity from parody. Perhaps his comic touch, alternately cute and curt, keeps Blancanieves cheerfully light on its feet. Scenes featuring a chicken named Pepe are invariably delightful, since chickens are undoubtedly nature's funniest creatures (beside crabs). Technical elements are very good throughout, as are performances: a standout is Maribel Verdu as one fierce bitch.

• I know that this film is about bullfighting, and I'm certainly no fan of bullfighting. It also features some animals quite prominently, including the aforementioned chicken and, of course, some bulls. On the bullfighting, this is simply a film about bullfighters. It does not glorify their sport, just as you'll remember Zero Dark Thirty didn't glorify torture. On the use of animals during filming (which I'm normally not a fan of)... look, chickens are so bloody stupid there's no way Pepe was any less happy than he'd usually be around humans anyway, so I've no complaints there.
• Blancanieves might remind some of you of The Artist. Both are silent films in black and white, European-made and set c.1920s. I enjoyed The Artist, and found many aspects of it to be well made. But Blancanieves kicks its scrawny Oscar-winning arse. From the regular use of dialogue cards to the honestly-earned emotion to the technical excellence to the absence of an intelligent animal actor to the fact that it's happy enough to have its cake, and let us eat it instead. If you liked The Artist, bitch plz, you should be watching this shit instead. I didn't bring this up in the review because it's not relevant. Blancanieves, like all films, ought to be judged in isolation of unrelated works of art.
• On that note, Paco Delgado's costumes are at least ten times better than his Oscar-nominated outfits for Les Miserables.
• Macarena Garcia is, in some shots (particularly toward the end), the bloody spit of Katy Perry.