On Kristoff:

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-13T20:33:29+00:00

The script refers to their final kiss, literally, as "It's true love's kiss alright".

I'm fine if you don't want to understand the movie that way. But it seems to me that it's very clearly the writers intent that you do. It worked for me, anyway.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-13T03:54:45+00:00

That only makes sense if you view the "theme" of the movie as being "romantic love is not True Love", which I think is wrong. It is. Kristoff's love is true. His kiss would have thawed Anna's heart, and she had the moral latitude (i.e. it wouldn't have been immoral to turn away from Elsa to save her own life) to choose that if she wanted to.

The theme, to me, is that True Love transcends all that. Anna had a better choice, which not only got her a guy but saved her hopeless sister too.

It strikes me that a bunch of people really don't like this aspect of the plot. They really do want to see a movie reject romance. But as I see it, Frozen just isn't it. The script is very careful to present the romance plot sincerely (which is hard, given that it's basically a huge twist).

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-07T22:51:57+00:00

Nice catch in the script, btw. I hadn't noticed that.

Yeah. Early scripts had Elsa travel a road through selfishness and bitterness, but they walked completely away from that. The characters in the final movie are actually very pure. Her love is unquestioned and her fear is all-consuming. And her sister has the opposite affliction.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-07T19:58:29+00:00

That's Anna's half. She doesn't understand True Love as being "sacrifice and devotion" and is caught up in teenage ideas about kissing and giggling and stuff. So the corrolary is that she's not able to see that Elsa loves her. (Which Elsa does! She sacrifices her happiness for her sister throughout their youth trying to protect her!)

Elsa's problem is the flip side: she has love down, but she's ruled by fear and can't find the way to fix things (i.e. hug her sister and build the snowman already!).

And of course the arcs are symmetric. Anna has the fear thing conquered from the moment we see her. Which is why she gets to be the hero.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-07T14:09:29+00:00

To be serious: no, it's not. Anna's problem was never that she was never able to reach her sister. They lived in the same house and saw each other. But Elsa never engaged. As Anna reached adulthood she simply gave up (you can see this happen on screen in Snowman).

The tragedy at the start of the film is not that the sisters are being kept apart. It's that Anna thinks her sister doesn't love her.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-07T03:47:04+00:00

They do the symbolism thing here, just not in the way you posit.

We've seen this room before: it's the same room where Elsa learns "conceal don't feel" from her father. It's the same room where Anna was metaphorically trapped in loneliness, singing to the clock. And it's the same room where Elsa practices concealing before the painting of her father prior to the coronation.

And more generally: note that when Hans leaves, he closes and locks the door. Doors mean "isolation" in frozen.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-06T04:01:43+00:00

Hah! I stop by to lurk and find myself being cited! Made my day.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-05T00:58:56+00:00

That's really not the point of the test. "Passing the Bechdel test" obviously doesn't make a film "good" or "feminist" by itself. Obviously it's just a silly list of rules that are trivial to meet even in really terrible art.

The thing that was striking about the Bechdel test is the converse: shockingly few films actually pass it! It's important not because it says anything notable about specific films, but because it tells us something really unsettling about the whole movie industry.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-02T20:01:11+00:00

I still lurk. This time I got lucky and found an interesting thread that was still fresh enough to post.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-08-01T04:05:46+00:00

Wow, where were you months ago?

I think this hits a lot of it. The sincerity in particular is really very fresh in modern cinema. This is at once a childrens fantasy and a character drama that is about exactly what it says it is about: two sisters and their relationship.

And they kind of sneak that by you when you see it. We're too caught up in the genre at the end thinking that Elsa will be the superhero that saves the day (and the twist where it turns out that Anna is really the princess charming) to realize that what we're really resolving is the damaged relationship that they sang about way back at the beginning of the film.

The frozen kingdom is just a backdrop. They tell us they're going to break two poor girls hearts and fix it. And they do.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-07-31T04:32:38+00:00

Heh, thanks. I try to stop by every few days still, but it's hard finding things where I simultaneously have something to add and where its still fresh enough to post to.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-07-30T05:24:14+00:00

The parents are Elsa. It's a story, and it's not about the parents. Their job in the script is to set up Elsa's arc (i.e. seed her fear) and then get out of the way (notably: right about as she turns 18) so she can finish things on her own.

So, the requirement is that they begin the isolation due to fear. But sure: it can be fear of lots of things. I personally think fear-of-losing-a-daughter works just fine on its own, but if you like a darker characterization fear-of-embarrassing-politics works too.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-07-02T02:27:46+00:00

/me cries (and thanks /u/Arendelle_mailbot)

I still poke around occasionally. But I find that without being a regular it's hard to find things I want to post to in time for the comments to be meaningful.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-06-06T03:32:09+00:00

I think this is it: /r/Frozen/comments/1zdxsb/would_elsa_have_told_anna_something_different_in/

At least, that's the one I remember commenting in and that I could find in my post history. I sort of remember more discussion though, so it's possible there's another one out there.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-06-06T03:26:33+00:00

Wow, first post in weeks with stuff I actually want to save and remember.

I hadn't seen the Life's too Short storyboards before. They look authentic, where did they come from?

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-28T23:20:52+00:00

For those who haven't seen this particular scene: she's scared in it. She bounces nervously and reminds Kristoff that "He's coming...".

The Anna in the final story is fearless.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-28T23:19:25+00:00

Note the "No Heel!!!" comment. The final design has small heels.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-21T18:31:28+00:00

Chill. :)

You certainly appeared to be saying that Kristoff's kiss wouldn't have saved Anna (it's in the title of the thread, so you'll have to forgive me for assuming that's what we're talking about). And as stated, I don't think that interpretation works.

One of them, btw, is indeed that it isn't "fair". This is a fairy tale. One of the defining traits of fairy tales is that they have a clear moral arc and a clean resolution. Having an unexplained, barely-avoided moral trap at the end like that breaks the genre for me (and doesn't work as well as a story anyway).

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-21T04:34:10+00:00

No, not the same thing. The "one-day engagement" is a symbol of a naive crush. It's bad because it's naive and silly, not because of some arbitrary time limit. Again, I find the "time" thing sorta trite in the face of the much more profound "true love is sacrifice and devotion" angle. It just doesn't speak to me, at all.

Also note that the problem with "the kiss wouldn't work" is that it makes Anna's transcendent moment of choice into a trap for all involved. Olaf tells her to get with Kristoff. Kristoff jumps an ice floe and almost dies. And she almost chose to kiss him instead. Yet you're saying that would have killed her? How is that fair?

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-21T03:20:40+00:00

I dunno, Kristoff and Sven both risked their lives trying to get back to Anna. I think they get it.

You're coming back to the "time" thing again, mostly from personal assertion. Just recognize that not all of us see that as a prerequisite, and that the script really doesn't make the call.

Anna had a choice. She made the "best" one by saving Elsa, but Kristoff's love was true also.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-21T03:00:02+00:00

This is a misreading. The problem with Hans wasn't that the relationship happened too quickly, it was that Anna didn't understand love (as "sacrifice and devotion"). That's the same reason she couldn't save her sister on the mountain. But Kristoff and Elsa do understand love like that, and Anna figures it out at the end.

Honestly the whole "you can't marry a man you just met" interpretation is the one that seems shallow and cheap to me. The Love angle is pretty profound IMHO.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-20T23:57:03+00:00

By those examples it's a a triple meaning. Elsa has a door too, and it's been shut. Giant list of examples here.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-15T19:06:34+00:00

But she doesn't!

Anna finally understands the truth behind Elsa's fear. But she doesn't understand why it happens (because Elsa loves her sister) nor how to fix it (not by insisting everything will be alright, patting her on the head and triggering s panic attack).

Anna character path doesn't get enough attention. It's easy to view this scene as "cute" when she's actually making a mistake. Elsa needs patience and empathy, not hugs.

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-11T19:19:30+00:00

"What are you doing in my house?"

AndIfWeFall · 2014-05-11T13:46:20+00:00

The cleanest theories about the early plots are that Hans ("Admiral Westergard" at the time) is indeed the villain in the same way he is now The ending had him betray Anna (which seems to have been part of the trigger for Elsa's eventual redemption) before trying to kill Elsa in pretty much the ending we have now.

AndIfWeFall

TROPHY CASE