Snow drift – ‘Snow White and the Huntsman’ a new take on an old archetype

In theaters Friday: Madagascar 3: Europe’s Most Wanted, Prometheus
New on Blu-ray/DVD: John Carter, Machine Gun Preacher, Safe House

For centuries the archetypes and easily traceable hero journeys of popular fairy tales have provided enough raw material for a universe of stage plays, novels, TV series and movies. In just the last few years, we’ve seen Alice in Wonderland, Red Riding Hood, and now, Snow White get their shot at revival.

Tarsem Singh’s farcical take Mirror Mirror landed with a thud earlier this spring, but now Snow White and the Huntsman has proven its mettle with more than $50 million in U.S. box office receipts. Far darker than Mirror Mirror, and especially the beloved, fanciful Disney version from the 1930s, Huntsman is a black, jagged blade of a tale, turning its delicate heroine into a tortured outcast, desperate, emotionally isolated and in grave danger at every turn.

The question of this version is not, “Who will save her from the evil queen?” but “How will she save herself, and can she bring prosperity to her long-suffering subjects?” Kristen Stewart stars as Snow White, and to her credit or that of the film’s editor, her well-known Twilight tics are kept to a minimum here. I think I counted just one brushing back of the hair and two angsty lip-bites. Her performance is certainly white, as in, vanilla.

Thor star Chris Hemsworth is okay, but not overtly affective, as the grizzly, mead-swilling brooder hired to find Snow White in the dark forest and bring her to the queen. Fortunately, Charlize Theron sinks far deeper into her role as the dark monarch who literally sucks the beauty and life out of pretty young things to sustain her own. Theron’s Ravenna, as she is known, is one of the more striking screen villains because of the actress’s ability to take what could have been a stale, stock portrayal of a well-trod character and steep it in curious details and moments of tense, chilling nuance.

Theron’s poisonous scene-chewing and a few moments of levity and heart from the otherwise sidelined dwarves aside, this film needs to decide what it is, or at least, what it is not. In some vain attempt to be everything to everyone, this Snow White spoon-feeds every plot point and emotional beat to the audience—like any good kids’ movie might—but then simultaneously delivers enough dark Burton-esque surrealism and seething, often nude, queen wickedness to frighten the very same children. Maybe this is made for mindless teenagers, with all of its exposition and over-explanations aimed at cutting through a flurry of texting and talking throughout the movie.

Fans of fantasy can find a few things to enjoy in this interpretation—from first time feature director Rupert Sanders, no less—and certainly this is the best of the recent fairy tale adaptations, but unfortunately that is not saying altogether much. The problem is that none of them are giving us something we truly haven’t seen before, which is exactly what the original authors of the tales did so well so long ago. None are daring to dream.