Mirror Mirror

Who’s the fairest of them all?

Why it must be Snow White!

This year, the film industry witnesses two remakes of the classic fairy tale, Snow White and the Seven Dwarves. Mirror Mirror is the first of the two and is still out in cinemas, which will be shortly followed by the release of Snow White and the Huntsman in June.

Mirror Mirror, directed by Tarsem Singh who brought us Immortals, has again worked his magic and delivered us this beautifully remade Snow White tale. This tale is loosely based on the Brothers Grimm fairytale, Schneewittchen (Little Snow White), with elements also taken from another of their tales, Snow White and Red-Rose, one of these elements being the thieving dwarves.

Singh has managed to successfully make an original film, with its essence still intact. Singh brings us a crazed alluded Queen (Julia Roberts) who fears growing old; an extremely clumsy Prince (Armie Hammer) who is in constant need of saving; thieving dwarves who wear stilts to make them look like giants and an extremely determined female heroine, Snow White (Lily Collins). The film is brought together with camp humour, with some particularly delightful exchanges between The Queen and the Prince, alongside a narrative that, refreshingly, privileges feminist self-determination and success. It would seem that Snow white is not in need of saving as she is quite capable, after some training by the dwarves, to defeat the evil Queen. The handsome Prince, on the other hand, appears to be very clumsy and is the one saved by Snow after all.

Overall Mirror Mirror is a refreshing take on the original fairytales written by the Brothers Grimm. The film is light-hearted and enjoyable to watch, but unfortunately seems to lack the darkness that the original fairytales hold. This could be due to the fact that this film is tailored to a family audience, as it is a fantastic family film, but for the older audience at times it may seem a little too childlike.

Salmon Fishing in the Yemen: A Review

From director, Lasse Hallström, and the writer of The Full Monty, Simon Beaufoy, based on the best-selling novel by Paul Torday, comes a fishy tale about much more than just salmon fishing.

Ewan McGregor stars in this British romantic comedy drama, alongside Emily Blunt and Kristen Scott Thomas, as a Scottish Ichthyologist, Dr. Alfred Jones, who is asked to work on a project which will bring salmon to the river Yemen. A visionary Sheikh (Amr Waked) finances this multimillion pound project, as he believes that fishing brings people together and could be the answer to uniting people and countries worldwide. Alfred and Harriett (Emily Blunt), the Sheikh’s representative, must embark upon this upstream struggle to prove that the theoretically possible is, in fact, realistically possible.  However, the over-enthusiastic Press Secretary (Kristen Scott Thomas), from the Prime Minister’s office, is chasing at their heels as she sees this project as a media opportunity to spread some ‘good will’ that will act as a distraction from the bombings in Afghanistan. In this funny light-hearted comedy anything seems possible as long as you have a bit of faith.

This film, however, appears to question more than just the possibility of fishing in Yemen. The Press Secretary, Patricia Maxwell and the particularly vain Prime Minister allow the film to inadvertently criticise Government and their handling of the press, as they only seem to care about image, rather than what is right for the individual people. Humour soon becomes a tool for subverting authority in this film. The media is represented as Maxwell presents herself; cold-hearted, manipulative, overzealous and intrusive. The project for Maxwell becomes all about the press coverage, rather than the intentions of the Sheikh. It is, therefore, the character of Maxwell and the outrageous ways in which she deals with situations that brings out the humour.

The character of Maxwell is contrasted by the Sheikh who believes fishermen to be the most faithful, because they do not dwell on their fellow fisherman’s backgrounds or ethnicities, but share common ground, the fish. The Sheikh, throughout the film, promotes this idea of multiculturalism through fishing. However, this idea, when put into reality, is an upstream struggle, but if one can have a bit of faith, like the fishermen who wait for hours for a bite, and if one is willing to swim against the current, like Dr. Jones, and open one’s mind then it is possible to turn the theoretically possible into the realistically possible, if the right approach is taken.

This philosophically uplifting film, where fish become metaphors for humans, who are in need, now and again, to swim upstream rather than downstream, is a delight to watch. Salmon Fishing is a film about people, rather than fish, however, it does not dwell on these heavy issues that it presents, but focuses on the humour that comes from such a preposterous project and, therefore, is a light-hearted and entertaining romantic comedy drama to watch. It is a film about making the ever impossible possible.