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Film: Snow White and the Huntsman

Country: USA

Year of Release: 2012

Director: Rupert Sanders

Screenwriters: Evan Daugherty, John Lee Hancock, Hossein Amini

Starring: Kristen Stewart, Chris Hemsworth, Charlize Theron, Ian McShane, Bob Hoskins, Ray Winstone

♥♥♥½

After the shocking mess that was Mirror Mirror, it’s something of a relief to report that this latest rendition of the classic fairy tale – apparently the 20th filmed version – is, for the most part, an engaging and visually dazzling affair that owes as much of its lineage to Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth as it does to Walt Disney’s 1937 work Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.

Beginning in a gorgeous wintry landscape, the film soon introduces us to the beautiful young princess Snow White and her doting mother, the queen (Liberty Ross). But when the queen dies, Snow White’s father, the King, falls into inconsolable grief, a grief that is only lightened when he sees the beautiful face of Ravenna (Charlize Theron), who he rescues from a mysterious dark army that is keeping her prisoner.

Instantly smitten, the King shortly marries Ravenna, which is revealed to be something of a poor decision when Ravenna calls forth her own army, who proceed to gut the royal palace of its original inhabitants. Those who aren’t killed escape into exile, except for Snow White, who is kept locked up in a room high in a castle tower.

Obsessed with maintaining her youth and beauty, a feat she achieves by sucking the life force from young women, Ravenna consults regularly with her mirror to ensure that she is still the fairest woman in the kingdom. But one day when the mirror announces that there is someone fairer than Ravenna – and her name is Snow White (Kirsten Stewart) – the queen has an apoplexy. However, there is a bright side to being relegated to being to runner-up in the beauty stakes. For, as the mirror informs her, if Ravenna can suck Snow White’s pure life-force she will achieve immortality.

Snow White, however, manages to escape, and soon finds herself all alone in the terrifying dark forest, a landscape whose every darkness is covered with crawling creatures. When Ravenna sends a huntman to kill Snow White, he instead chooses to look after her and defend her. As the strange couple moves across a series of magical landscapes, some familiar from the original tale, some not, gradually Snow White transforms into a warrior queen.

Snow White and the Huntman is a triumph of art direction and elegantly rendered digital effects. This isn’t the back-handed  compliment it sounds like. This Snow White – like all fairy tales really – reduces it characters to archetypes, and as such, the characters are more visual representations than they are conveyors of emotional truth. Backed by strong writing and careful pacing, the result is a film that carefully balances its use of action with remarkable moments of seductive fantasy. The scene in which Snow White wanders through the forest communing with the woodlands creatures – probably the most famous scene from the Disney version – is so delicately and sumptuously produced that its gives Disney a run for his money.

If there’s a problem with the film, it’s in the thinness of much of the acting, particularly Kristen Stewart, whose face seems to be permanently looking slightly skyward. But this isn’t a major problem for a film whose magic is visual rather than emotional. Still it would have taken the film to the next level if it had been populated by stellar actors.

Finally, while I mention Guillermo Del Torro and Walt Disney as obvious references, another key influence is the television series Game of Thrones, which Snow White and the Huntsman resembles in its blend of fantasy and a kind of mucky realism. If you’re a fan of the series, you should enjoy Snow White and the Huntsman. They are very closely related indeed.