When “Brave” premiered at the Seattle International Festival in June, 2012, it was the first feature from Pixar Animation Studios to feature a female protagonist. By that point, the studio’s previous 12 features across 17 years had defined it as a cultural behemoth in animation. Although the reception was positive, the general feeling then was that “Brave” was good but not great Pixar material. It was a foray into the princess-mode of storytelling that was more reminiscent of Disney. Disney had, in fact, bought Pixar Studios six years earlier, so that “Brave” was, technically, a Disney film. The story of Scottish princess Merida, and her journey towards self-actualisation, felt less ground-breaking than the studio’s more overtly unusual premises, such as an old widower chasing adventure in “Up”, the robot love story in “Wall-E”, or a rat with culinary ambitions in “Ratatouille”. The straightforward premise of “Brave” a princess who refuses to be betrothed and her relationship with her mother felt quaint in the context of the previous films. The rocky production history also hadn’t helped. Brenda Chapman, the first female director for Pixar, started the project as the sole director but was joined by Mark Andrews in a move that felt more like studio interference than one intending creative legitimacy. And yet, a decade later, and with so much changed in the animation world, I think of “Brave” more fondly than many of its counterparts. It is a modest story in many ways, atmospheric more than plotty in key moments, but so thoroughly earnest and warm and gorgeous that I always think of it as an easy-highlight of Pixar’s 25-film history.
The fluffy red tangled hair that defines Princess Merida, feels central to the aesthetic proficiency in “Brave”. Pixar’s innovative work over the last three decades has been marked by ambitious shifts in mainstream animation studios, and even if I think that Laika Studios’ “Coraline” is still the most beautiful animated film this century, “Brave” is my pick for Pixar’s best-looking film, even with tough competition from the futuristic designs in “Wall-E” or the dreamy underworld in “Coco”. A lot of that beauty is found in the precise sense of place in “Brave”, which has an easy lay-up with the Scottish Highlands as its primary location. It’s difficult to fumble the sheer splendour of the locale, and yet the ways that the film plays around with textures, light and shadows are consistently impressive. Place is so critical to this world, and the sense of momentousness in the look of “Brave” is so distinct, majestic and compelling. But even if “Brave” is beautiful, and Pixar films are always beautiful, it offers more albeit in ways that have been atypical for the studio.
It’s easy to ground memorising of “Brave” in the significance of that female protagonist, but even more than its at the time revolutionary focus on girls, “Brave” remains peculiar in Pixar for being the single feature-film release that is so enmeshed in royalty. Typically, Pixar films are about losers, or everymen. Even “The Incredibles”, with its superhero characters, present the superheroes as a variation on a traditional suburban family, rather than someone of a class removed from the norm. Within that framework, it’s easy to see how “Brave” feels bound to the “special” legacies of recent Disney films, such as “Frozen”, “Moana” and “Encanto,” which all feature the kind of spunky girl on the cusp of womanhood who grapples with her role in her “special” family. Even as “Encanto” (unlike “Frozen”, “Moana” and “Brave”) is not a princess-story, it retains the same sensibility of a “special family” experiencing vaunted importance among their peers. And it’s understandable how “Brave” can be read as fanciful in that way.
And the royal aspect is important. The burgeoning crisis at work is that sixteen-year-old Merida must become betrothed to the son of one of her father’s allies. It’s an important step in safeguarding the Dunbroch clan to which her father, King Fergus, belongs. Merida’s refusal to be betrothed, winning her own hand-in-marriage in the film’s thrilling archery sequence, prompts chaos in the kingdom and the ire of her mother (Queen Elinor), who refuses to accept Merida’s flouting of her womanly duties. Merida’s subsequent encounter with the witch who promises to fix her problems only causes chaos when the “fix” of her mother/daughter conflict is to turn her mother into a silent bear. It doesn’t help that the Dunbroch clan has, historically, had their issues with bears. Cue the chaos and adventures. Can mother and daughter find a way back to each other before disaster? Of course, they can. It’s a Pixar film after all. But knowing doesn’t quell the emotional agility of “Brave”.
The truly special thing about “Brave” (and I do think that it is special) is that sincere earnestness. There is very little in this film that is predicated on a sense of self-assured certainty, or even the winking kind of irony that peppers its typical approaches to humour. If newness is the mark of Pixar, I can understand why the remove to royalty feels regressive, especially in the light of the contemporary. But even as Merida is modelled on our perceptions of “modern” girls as different, the film itself does not care to hammer that home. A brief cameo by Merida in “Ralph Breaks the Internet”, I think, misreads the character. Placed in a room of Disney properties, Merida is positioned as “not-like-the-other-girls” kind of princess and yet I think that portrayal misses what is thoughtful and gentle about “Brave”. Its bravery is not that Merida is an atypical princess but that she, and her mother, recognise that bravery is not just what one does (and can do) but what one chooses not to do. Yes, they learn to see the world through each other’s eyes but it is in the avoidance of choices, too, that defines so much of “Brave” including Merida significantly choosing not to marry at the end of the film. And even though Pixar’s recent “Turning Red” also explores the dynamic between mother and daughter, “Brave” feels truly revolutionary for the way it offers – especially in 2012 – this as a subject in its male oriented oeuvre. That that messaging manages to avoid hokeyness is because the film is rooted in the sharp specificity of these people in this place at this specific time; the folk music from Mumford and Sons on the soundtrack still feels more precise than the score of any Pixar film since. It does not look outward to generalise, but only warmly has eyes for the people in its story buoyed by the central duo of Kelly Macdonald and Emma Thompson as Merida and Elinor.
Removed from the excess, “Brave” is more modest but in its way also more indelible. Even the supernatural manoeuvrings of its plot feel restrained and warm in a way that predates more philosophical plotless avenues of animation its approach to Elinor’s transformation is so straightforward. And, of course, “Brave” is not quite plotless although the way it chooses to navigate itself as either a mother-daughter situation or more precisely a character study of Merida, feels striking in its emotional maturity but also for its clear-eyed naturalness. At ten, “Brave” is less flashy and way more modest than the other Pixar and Disney films it sits against. But it is that gentleness and wonderfully specific earnestness that distinguish it for the better.
