Encanto (Film) Review.

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I'm a highly emotive person; I'm aware that the potential for me to be emotionally manipulated is high and so I try to afford some caution with mainstay Disney and Pixar works; I want to feel what I feel sincerely and from a place of understanding. So Encanto surprised me in what it did; giving me a plot that manages to capture me while slightly dancing around certain tropic plot points that would've brought it down and disappointed me.

 

Focusing on someone who gives their all to their family and feels undervalued in compared to their own strengths, abandoned in some ways by expectation, it’s a story told about Mirabel, the girl with now abilities in a family full of them. At its best, Encanto is a film about empathy; the understanding of others situations and lived experiences and using that connection to allow us to bridge the gaps between us. The film does take and focus on the personal ostracization of Mirabel, especially by her Abuela, Alma. The film does a very lovely job of emphasizing that individual experiences of each member of the family or at the least, the majority of those that get focus. A trauma follows Alma and it impacts upon the rest of her family for decades, leading to a finale that is magnificent and poignant.

 

I don't have much to say, beyond that; the music is incredible and performed with sincere clarity, the visuals are stunning and look on par if not exceeds some of the best both Disney and Pixar have produced; the animation itself is fluid and carries well with it a heart to each motion, from the exaggerative and truly energetic younger generation to the slow steadiness of the elder Alma. It's clear thought was present in all of this and it shows.

 

I cried ferociously by the end because what caught me the most about this film, was chasing a feeling a lot may have also struggled with; being enough. The feeling of balancing understanding others while feeling respected in your own feelings and experiences. And how our empathy connects us and strengthens us. I am happy to have, on a day which has seen me here and there, found strength in this films foundation.

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