By Timothy Jairaj
If you haven’t seen it, I’d hate to spoil it for you, so I’ll just tell you that it passes the Bechdel Test. Now go watch the movie, then come back and read the rest.
Once upon a dream, there lived a man who told the story of a young girl called Aurora. Long story short, she was cursed by a wicked fairy, Maleficent, and on her sixteenth birthday she was to die by the prick of a spinning wheel’s spindle. But then, one of the three good fairies in the land lessened the curse to but a sleep from which the young princess would awake with the kiss of true love. And thus it came to pass that a handsome prince slayed the wicked witch and kissed the lovely maiden with true love and she awoke and they all lived happily ever after. Until 2014, when someone decided to tell the story of the wicked fairy, Maleficent.
Young Maleficent is the most powerful fairy in the land of magic, which is next to the kingdom of humans. One day, three of her fairy friends come to her with news, and begin squabbling about who gets to tell her. With that, the movie passed the Bechdel Test, but women are consistently seen talking to each other in conversations between the three fairies, between Maleficent and Aurora’s mother, and Maleficent and Aurora.
What’s interesting in the movie is the break with tradition that the story offers – it’s all about a woman who gets hurt, picks herself up, and moves on. The ‘wicked’ fairy, the independent woman, is no longer unreasonably evil, like the wicked witch or wicked stepmother in every fairy tale. And the father-figure isn’t the good guy here, as he is everywhere else.
Maleficent (Angelina Jolie) suffers being ditched and then gruesomely betrayed (which left a lump in my throat) by Stefan (Sharlto Copley), so that he can finally become king of the humans. She pays him back by cursing his daughter. What follows is a story that unfolds between Maleficent and Aurora (Elle Fanning) far away from the castle, where she is supposedly safe from Maleficent. Maleficent cannot undo her curse, so everyone waits for some prince to drop by and fall in love with Aurora. This guy, Prince Phillip (Brenton Thwaites), was a complete fail. The curse happened, but, to my relief, his kiss was useless (Like seriously, he met her five minutes back!). But True Love’s Kiss comes from an unexpected quarter, and the movie ends with everyone living happily ever after. Another victory – from an 18-year-old’s perspective – is that the movie retains the fairy-tale-ness of the story and the moral of it: that good screws evil.
Timothy Jairaj is an intern at The Ladies Finger and a student at St. Joseph’s College of Arts & Sciences, Bangalore.