Cinderella

Cinderella (U)

USA 2015 113 mins Dir: Kenneth Branagh Cast: Lily James, Cate Blanchett, Richard Madden, Stellan Skarsgard, Derek Jacobi, Holliday Grainger, Sophie McShera

Impressively delving beneath the most archaic fairy tale archetypes and investing a tale as old as the hills with genuine emotional feeling, Kenneth Branagh’s live action take on Disney’s Cinderella is a genuinely charming and magical experience. Charles Perrault’s timeless story was of course turned into an enduring 1950 animated classic and, somewhat refreshingly, Branagh hews close to the traditional tone of the text, flipping the bird to such self-consciously revisionist fare as Maleficent or Snow White and the Huntsman.

Whereas the latter two movies added po-faced sturm und drang and emo moodiness to generation-defining Disney classics, Branagh has a much simpler – and frankly much more appealing – message in mind for his (admittedly younger) target audience: approach the world with kindness and sincerity, even when it’s seemingly at its most cruel and hostile. It’s one that resonates with clear-eyed purity.

It helps that he has a terrifically winsome yet appealing lead in the form of Downton Abbey’s Lily James, here playing a Cinders who stops just short of sappy irritation. A somewhat treacly opening prologue nevertheless indicates Branagh’s sure-footed emotional touch, as the young Cinderella is forced to say goodbye to her beloved mother (Hayley Atwell) in a genuinely moving scene. Fast forward several years and her kindly father (Ben Chaplin) is ready to marry again.

Enter a show-stopping Cate Blanchett as the film’s ace-in-the-hole. Her Lady Tremaine, having secured the hand of Cinderella’s father, doesn’t waste time when another instance of family tragedy forces our heroine to adopt the slovenly rags of a servant girl, horribly treated by both her wicked stepmother and her two equally awful, gaudily attired daughters (Holliday Grainger and fellow Downton alumni Sophie McShera). From here, it’s a matter of waiting for Cinders to catch the eye of the handsome Prince Kit (Game of Thrones’ Richard Madden), her transformation into a showstopping beauty aided as before by her Fairy Godmother (Helena Bonham Carter), a pumpkin coach and those iconic glass slippers.

However, although Branagh isn’t one to deviate from the version of Cinderella we know and love, the surprising level of emotional nuance carries us through. Intelligent character touches are resplendent in Chris Weitz’s script: Madden’s Prince Kit isn’t just a preening bimbo but a young man grappling with his own destiny and happiness, his scenes with Branagh’s mentor Derek Jacobi as the King resonating as some of the movie’s strongest. And most importantly, Blanchett fully transcends the cackling stepmother archetype, conveying the essence of a damaged woman who sees in Cinderella the spirit of her former self.

In short, we care about the characters, in part down to the deceptively intelligent script and in part down to the brilliantly chosen actors (Nonso Anozie as Kit’s loyal Captain is another easily overlooked highlight). Branagh repeats the same trick that we’ve seen both in his Shakespearean adaptations and also his terrific Marvel blockbuster Thor: he recognises the operatic quality of the material yet he also humanises it, adding humorous and empathetic touches that take us behind the fairy tale curtain. The film’s technical design, from Sandy Powell’s ravishing costumes to Dante Feretti’s production design (embellished with subtle CGI) and Patrick Doyle’s soaring score, sprinkle vital amounts of extra fairy dust on Branagh’s enchanting vision.