Synopsis
Encanto (2021) centers on the Madrigals, a family of gifted individuals. Abuela Alma is the matriarch of the family and they live in an adorable casita that is as enchanted as they are. Their home and powers are a legacy gained after the death of Abuela’s husband, Abuelo Pedro. The magic of the house and the candle protect them from their enemies. But something more creeping and internal threatens to destroy this colorful family.
Analysis
Encanto (2021) is a Disney cartoon a tier above other Disney cartoons. Like Pixar’s Soul (2020), it addresses real-life issues within the framework of the fantastical. Cartoons, fairytales, and folklores have a way of polarizing characters. There is always the good guy and the bad guy and a constant tug-of-war between good and evil. This works wonderfully, as most times, stories intended for children are often designed to be didactic. However, the truth is life is not a houndstooth jacket and things are never as black or white as stories will have us believe. This is where Encanto (2021) gets it right. There was no good guy or bad guy, just human beings doing what they feel is best for the collective and being misunderstood while at it.
The major theme of the movie is pressure. Being special comes with a special set of responsibilities, problems, and pressure. People put pressure on you. Your family puts pressure on you. And you know the worst part? You put pressure on yourself, which is the worst type of pressure.
The Madrigal family were the icons of their village. The villagers built their lives around them. Everyone looked up to them, loved them, and, dare I say, wanted to be them. Unfortunately, all this hero-worship brings a lot of pressure, whether you are the beautiful Isabella, the strong Luisa, or the special, un-special Mirabel.
‘Pressure makes diamonds.’
This is one phrase/aphorism I am sure a lot of us have heard ad nauseam. We use it to contextualize the struggles we go through and how those struggles can refine us. While I am a believer in the refining capacity of struggle, not all pressure is constructive. To quote, the basketball player, Robert Horry, ‘Pressure can burst pipes.’ And the pressure on this family was not the refining variety but rather the destructive, pipe-bursting variety.
Mirabel
While she is the protagonist, I don’t think she is the worst hit by the pressure to be a perfect, special and strong Madrigal. She is, however, a close third. Being Mirabel is a reality none of us wants to live. She is the black sheep, the normal one, and she even wore glasses to boot. It’s kind of like studying Art History at a community college when everyone in your family is a surgeon and a product of ivy league schools. Children are honest to a fault. And it is with this undiluted honesty that one child from the village tells Maribel, ‘I think your power is being in denial’ when Maribel insists she is special even without powers. It was painful to watch.
That is how it is to be un-special in a family of special people. That hollow ‘Oh’ people say when they realize you are ‘normal’. It is a bit like being disqualified even before the runners take their spot. You feel like part of the family and at the same time like an outsider looking in. We see this when Maribel is mistakenly excluded from the family picture.
In Encanto (2021), everyone gets their own special room when they come into their power. As the fifteen-year-old Maribel never got powers, she has to stay in the nursery with the young Antonio. Abuela is worried about the magic and is afraid that Antonio may not get powers just like Maribel. As evil as it sounds, things would have been easier if Antonio also did not get powers. Maribel would have had company in the nursery and another member would be added to the un-special wing of the family. (Un)fortunately, Antonio gets a gift. The way people saw it, if Antonio got a gift, that means the magic was intact. If the magic was intact and Maribel had no powers, then something had to be wrong with Maribel, right?
Luisa
In the pressure equation, I feel Bruno was the worst hit. However, Luisa is a close second. Luisa is, for want of a better word, a strong woman. I think she is really pretty and attractive, but all that is underplayed as everyone focuses on her superhuman strength. She lifts churches, breaks mountains, and gets things done. Everyone applauds her strength and is in awe of her. Unfortunately, when you are always the strong one, people forget you are human too. This whole stuff becomes more pitiable when you realize she has had to be strong since she came into her gift at 5 years old. That’s an awfully young age to be strong.
When she starts her song and says she’s not nervous because she is the strong one, I shouted ‘You’re lying!’ at my screen. Every older sibling and everyone that has had to ‘be strong’ knows that excuse. The sad thing is that Luisa has also tied her self-worth and identity to how strong she can be and how much pressure she can withstand. In her words, ‘I am pretty sure I am worthless if I cannot be of service… Who am I if I cannot carry it all?… Who am I if I cannot run with the ball?’
Even though she says ‘she glows because she knows her worth’, everything she has been doing — being strong when she is afraid, shouldering it all, and keeping it all in — shows otherwise. The ship doesn’t balk when it encounters an iceberg and Luisa is the same. Like the donkeys she carries, she keeps lifting all the burdens. Everyone expects she’ll never break, no matter how much she buckles and bends under the pressure. And she does everything in her power to maintain that illusion. She exceeds expectations and breaks demands even though she needs to let go of the burden, chillax and let herself be taken care of.
Isabela
I wrote this one off as the ‘superficial one’ the instant I saw her. You know those corny poems that liken women to spring? That’s what I thought of when I saw her. Everything about her was in full bloom. The song even said she had never had a bad hair day. Like you have to have a special place in the hearts of the old and new gods to pull off such a feat. When she sang about Bruno’s prophecy for her, I rolled my eyes so far back it’s a wonder my eyes are not somewhere in my frontal lobe. Everything about her was perfect: her powers, her face and hair, her fiance, and even her future.
Or so I thought.
I have written about implicit biases before and no matter how aware we are, we sometimes fall prey to them. It’s easy to look at a pretty person or rich person and assume they have the easiest life. Yes, pretty privilege is a thing, but beauty can also be a burden. Everyone sees you as something to be conquered, owned, and displayed. Isabella is ‘effortlessly perfect.’ and it is hard to be perfect and twice as hard to make that perfection seem effortless. The plot thickens when we realize she doesn’t even like the insipid Mariano. She only accepted to marry him — and hopefully have his five babies — because she feels it is in the family’s best interest.
Dolores
When your name literally translates to ‘pains’, it comes as no surprise when your life is just as painful. The only power I hate as much as I hate Bruno’s is Dolores’s. It is pointless and just brings unnecessary trouble. It makes other people’s secrets yours and forces you to carry its weight. But that is not even the genesis of Dolores’ pain. I can be slow on the uptake, but I knew when they began singing that Dolores had a thing for Mariano. According to Bruno’s prophecy, she would have to watch him marry another — while convincing herself it was for the good of the family.
Bruno
This guy takes the gold medal in the sufferlympics. He got the shortest straw, and it kept getting shorter with each prophecy he gave. You can’t win with a gift like Bruno’s. Ask Jeremiah, he’d tell you. The future is like a tunnel. It is never really clear and things can swing either way depending on your actions and inactions. The version of the future the ‘seer’ sees depends on what you are currently doing. They have no power over it but ultimately they get blamed when what they see is not what we want to hear.
When Camilo described Bruno as being ‘seven-foot-tall with rats on his back’ I honestly imagined a Hispanic Jafar with a trio of vermin sidekicks and not the timid, unsure and considerate outcast Bruno turned out to be. Not all knowledge is power. Some knowledge can be poison and that is how it is with Bruno’s prophecies. His gift is one that is too heavy to lift.
You see something bad in the sands and call it as it is, you get a song about how ‘we don’t talk about Bruno.’
You decide to lie and paint a false happy ending, it still won’t end well for you.
So the third option is to leave and let people glory in the ignorance of their present.
Abuela Alma
In Notes of a Native Son, James Baldwin says, ‘it is impossible to eat enough when you are worried about the next meal.’ We can extend and paraphrase this to suit Abuela Alma’s situation: ‘It is impossible to feel safe when you are always worrying about the next attack.’ It is often easy to look at someone and write them off as cold, judgemental, and selfish. However, to understand them, you need to know what they have been through.
Becoming a widow at such a young age did a number on Abuela. She lost her home and suffered alone. So she channeled all her pain and energy into building the Madrigal legacy. Her family became her whole world, and its protection became singularly important. Every action and inaction was geared towards the preservation of her family. Anything that did not assure this became secondary. This was part of the reason she put pressure on everyone. The pressure was meant to make diamonds of them. The family always had to be strong and the magic, present. Nothing less was acceptable.
It is easy to write her off as unfeeling and the bad guy but Abuela was as much a victim as the other members of her family. She was living on survival — and that is no way to live. Because of her primal need for survival, she lost a son for 10 years and was resented by her youngest granddaughter.
Inconsistencies
While Encanto (2021) answers a lot of coming-of-age questions, it leaves one important question unanswered: What is Mirabel’s gift? Many people speculate that her gift is empathy. I think it is a heartwarming and substantial gift. However, she doesn’t get a room/door, so is it safe to assume the candle and casita don’t rate emotive gifts?
Secondly, if Dolores can hear ‘everything’, how come she did not hear Bruno?
Fine, she heard him. However, Dolores cannot keep a secret. We see this when she outs Mirabel’s conversation with her father. This leaves me wondering one thing: Why did she not out Bruno’s hiding place? Why did she hold on to that secret even though she could ‘always hear him mumbling and grumbling.’
Oh well, we’d never know.
Encanto (2021) is the most fulfilling Disney cartoon I have watched in a while and an 8 on a 10-point scale.
When I am not writing reviews that verge on think pieces, I write about totally random stuff like why I Wish You a Hard Life and Cheers to the Soft Life
To read other movies reviews from me, check out Things Are Never Black or White: Review of I Passed for White (1960)
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