Encanto: Difference between revisions

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'''''Encanto''''' is a 2021 Disney film, the sixtieth work in the [[Disney Animated Canon]]. It features music created by Lin-Manuel Miranda and stars [[Stephanie Beatriz]] as the protagonist Mirabel.

 

 

Mirabel tries not to care about her lack of gifts, hoping to find her place in the world as an ordinary girl. The day of the latest gift ceremony, she notices cracks in the wall. They vanish when she tries to show the family, but she overhears Abuela worrying about them. The magic may be fading, and Mirabel has to figure out why.

* [[Disposable Fiancé]]: Reconstructed with Mariano. He seems nice enough while being smitten with Isabela, and most of the villagers would be thrilled to marry a Madrigal given their powers, but Abuela is arranging the match while making it look like it's Isabela's choice. They've only spent time together during formal events, under strict parental supervision. As a result, Isabela doesn't really know him, apart from what Dolores tells her, he might be more in love with the idea of Isabela rather than the reality, and Dolores may be trolling her when saying Mariano wants five kids {{spoiler|because ''she'' is in love with Mariano and Bruno said the love of her life would be in love with someone else}}. Eventually, Isabela realizes that {{spoiler|she was never given a choice about the matter because defying Abuela's will was never an option, and that she doesn't want to marry Mariano. She gains the courage to turn him down after the villagers rebuild La Casita, but tells him it's [[Nothing Personal]] while saying that Dolores likes him. Dolores takes the opportunity to properly introduce herself to Mariano, and he at least seems willing to get to know Isabela's cousin.}}

* [[Don't You Dare Pity Me!]]: While Mirabel doesn't say this outright, she has an annoyed expression whenever an outsider expresses sympathy or tries to make her feel better about having powers. Granted, the neighborhood kids are [[Innocently Insensitive]] about the fact that she has no gifts, and a local florist gives her a basket on the house called "The Not Special Special" in an attempt to make Mirabel feel better about her failed ceremony.

* [[Generational Trauma]]: ''Encanto'' puts this on full display for most of the movie. Abuela Alma witnessed bandits murdering her husband who attempted to protect her and their triplets, along with a group of refugees. When the miracle happened-- an ever-burning candle caused the mountains to rise and dispel the bandits while creating a safe haven for the survivors, and giving magic to Abuela's children-- Abuela became convinced that the best way to respect the miracle was to make her children useful. Unknowingly, her demand for perfectionism and rigidity causes her to alienate her powerless granddaughter Mirabel who tearfully pinpoints at her [[Rage Breaking Point]] that she will ''never'' be good enough for Abuela. That's not even going into how she inadvertently turned her son Bruno into the town's pariah {{spoiler|who opts to hide in la Casita walls to mend the cracks and protect Mirabel from one of his prophecies}}, has driven her other granddaughter Luisa to a near-breakdown with how Luisa feels she needs to literally carry the house's burdens on her back, and treats Isabela as the golden child who must never get her hands dirty despite an affinity for plants. It takes {{spoiler|la Casita crumbling as Mirabel finally calls out Abuela for her toxicity for Abuela to acknowledge the trauma of seeing her husband die in front of her and reconcile with her granddaughter after a dazed Mirabel wanders from the rubble}}.

* [[Go Mad From the Isolation]]: Poor {{spoiler|Bruno}} is still {{spoiler|a nice guy, but visibly undernourished and overworked hiding in La Casita's walls for ten years. He ran away after his last prophecy showed Mirabel standing in front of La Casita and knew that it would turn Mirabel into more of a scapegoat than she already is, but didn't want to leave his family to rot. He reveals to Mirabel that he has been entertaining himself by creating soap operas starring the rats}}.

** Mirabel tries to dissuade the kids when they keep asking what her gifts are, and running away from them. Dolores and Abuela drop the bomb that Mirabel never got a gift, as Mirabel is trying to be more tactful. The kids then say insensitively that Mirabel must be so sad and they feel bad for her. Mirabel tells them there is no shame in being ordinary when she is a Madrigal, while hiding her annoyance.

** The local florist delivers a gift to Mirabel since it's time for the next ceremony, and he was worried that she would be reminded of her own botched ceremony where her door disappeared. She appreciates the gesture, but not how he reveals that he called it "The Not-Special Special" because there is "nothing special" about her. Mirabel tucks it into the nursery before trying to help with the ceremony preparations.

** Isabela tends to blame Mirabel for things going wrong, because Mirabel is the only one who doesn't have powers in the family and Abuela encourages this mindset. Case in point: the dinner with Mariano goes wrong {{spoiler|because of Dolores opening her big mouth at the worst time about Mirabel finding a prophecy of her standing in front of the crumbling La Casita}}. When Mirabel tries to go to talk to her older sister, {{spoiler|hoping to subvert this fate and trusting Bruno's new prophecy that hugging Isabela will fix the cracks in La Casita, Isabela tells Mirabel it was her fault that the dinner went wrong. After at first trying to be the better person, Mirabel loses her temper and calls out Isabela for her spoiled attitude, saying that of ''course'' the golden child of the family that Abuela loves unconditionally must have ''such'' a terrible life. And one ruined dinner doesn't mean she'll be single forever, as Mariano would still marry her due to being the "perfect" Madrigal. Isabela then blurts out she doesn't want to marry Mariano. There's a {{Beat}}, as it sinks in for both sisters that Isabela was really angry about the expectations that she has to fill to maintain her golden child status, with Mirabel being an easy scapegoat, and she didn't realize she was miserable until the fight with Mirabel. She then creates new plants out of this rage, that allow her proper catharsis since they aren't neat flowers, and she lets go of her unreasonable anger towards Mirabel}}.

** Just as Isabela and Mirabel {{spoiler|patch things up}}, Abuela comes across them reconciling {{spoiler|while Isabela is covered in different types of colored pollen}}, and starts yelling at Mirabel for being a bad influence on Isabela and causing trouble with {{spoiler|the prophecy of Mirabel causing La Casita's fall being inevitable}}. This is despite the fact that it wasn't Mirabel who disrupted the dinner-- Dolores did with her big mouth and Mirabel was trying to rush the dinner to ensure that Dolores wouldn't blab about {{spoiler|the prophecy she found}}. Isabela has a silent [[Jerkass Realization]] on seeing how she's been treating her little sister and learned it from Abuela, and Mirabel ''snaps''. She calls out Abuela for putting impossible standards not just on her but on everyone in the family, how it led to Bruno running away {{spoiler|and living malnourished in the walls}}. No matter how much Mirabel would try, she would never please her grandmother and would always be a target of her scorn. {{spoiler|Abuela comes to realize that Mirabel is right, that her standards were causing the cracks in the wall, when the house collapses around them}}.

* [[Rashomon Style]]: Three different characters recall Pepa's wedding: Pepa herself, her husband Felix, and {{spoiler|Bruno}}. Felix starts to wax poetically about how it was the perfect day and his wife was so beautiful. Pepa interrupts to remind Felix that it's her story, and reveals that she was working hard to make sure the weather was perfect. Bruno then told her, "It looks like rain," causing her to freak out and cause a thunderstorm. She got mad at Bruno and believed he did it on purpose to mess with his sister. {{spoiler|Bruno reveals that while Pepa's account was true, she got the intentions wrong: he saw that she was a bundle of nerves and thought a little joke would lighten up the situation}}.

* [[You Can't Fight Fate]]: A reconstructed example with Bruno's predictions. He became the pariah because all his predictions came true, and they were negative stuff like the priest going bald or a woman's goldfish in a bowl dying. Pepa holds a grudge against Bruno for saying, "It looks like rain" to her on her wedding day, causing her to freak out from nerves and bring in a thunderstorm. {{spoiler|When we actually meet Bruno, he explains he never meant to hurt anyone and was only joking to Pepa to help her get over her nerves}}. Many of his predictions were actually inevitable due to human nature: people go bald over time, and keeping a goldfish in a bowl that small will kill it. While Bruno {{spoiler|spends ten years mending the cracks in La Casita, after seeing the prophecy that Mirabel would be standing in front of the falling house, he only delays the inevitable blowout when Abuela yells at Mirabel for cheering Isabela up after the disastrous dinner with Mariano, and Mirabel can no longer tolerate her grandmother's bullying}}. Mirabel does try to subvert this prophecy by {{spoiler|asking Bruno to cast one that will provide the answer on how to fix the cracks: while she isn't thrilled that it involves making up with Isabela, who has always been a bully to Mirabel and the perfect child, she agrees to at least try}}. The reason why Mirabel's actions don't fix the cracks is because {{spoiler|Abuela steamrolls her attempts to let Isabela try something for herself rather than conform to perfection. It does, however, reveal the cause of the cracks is Abuela's emotional abuse hurting everyone in the family by demanding perfection. The house falling and Mirabel nearly dying in the collapse give Abuela the wakeup call of what she's been doing}}.

 

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{{Disney Animated Canon}}

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