As I tweeted, I absolutely loved it, but that didn't have much to do with the plot. I thought the whole 'let us love as we will' part at the end was kind of annoyingly transparent, but I thought it was 500000x better than the alternative, ie a romance for Merida.
Now you mention it, I can definitely see the Ghibli touches. What really got me about the film overall, though, what made me love it, was its relationship to Scottishness. I went in expecting an animated Braveheart; I came out homesick. It wasn't even so much the Celtic mythology, though I do see that in touches; Scotland's actually fairly peripheral in Celtic myth, a lot of the time, compared with Ireland and Wales. But the iconography –– I've seen the ruined remnants of those standing stones, those carvings,those castles, and although I am fairly sure the film is not archaeologically accurate, it rang true in a way I simply was not expecting. And the writing: the characters talked like contemporary Scottish people, with real accents (even the incomprehensibly-talking guy is speaking in a specific dialect, Doric, that is famous *within Scotland* for being really difficult to understand). I couldn't quite understand how Pixar managed that until I read that the Scottish voice actors had a lot of input into the dialogue and delivery. I went in poised to be irritated by the comic/heroic-cliche version of my culture, and came out feeling that I had seen a product of and contribution to my culture. (Which is not the ancient Highlands, of course, but I confess I'm not too fussed about the authenticity of it all.) So that was nice. It might have made less of an impression if I weren't so far from home... I'll be fascinated to see how it goes over in Scotland when it comes out there in a few weeks.
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regna
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Date: 2012-07-19 23:51 (UTC)Now you mention it, I can definitely see the Ghibli touches. What really got me about the film overall, though, what made me love it, was its relationship to Scottishness. I went in expecting an animated Braveheart; I came out homesick. It wasn't even so much the Celtic mythology, though I do see that in touches; Scotland's actually fairly peripheral in Celtic myth, a lot of the time, compared with Ireland and Wales. But the iconography –– I've seen the ruined remnants of those standing stones, those carvings,those castles, and although I am fairly sure the film is not archaeologically accurate, it rang true in a way I simply was not expecting. And the writing: the characters talked like contemporary Scottish people, with real accents (even the incomprehensibly-talking guy is speaking in a specific dialect, Doric, that is famous *within Scotland* for being really difficult to understand). I couldn't quite understand how Pixar managed that until I read that the Scottish voice actors had a lot of input into the dialogue and delivery. I went in poised to be irritated by the comic/heroic-cliche version of my culture, and came out feeling that I had seen a product of and contribution to my culture. (Which is not the ancient Highlands, of course, but I confess I'm not too fussed about the authenticity of it all.) So that was nice. It might have made less of an impression if I weren't so far from home... I'll be fascinated to see how it goes over in Scotland when it comes out there in a few weeks.