This week, ‘Encanto’ won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature Film. Disney’s latest 3D Animation production tells the story of Mirabel and her magical family, the Madrigals. A wonderful adventure that tackles complex issues such as the weight of family pressures, expectations and the constant search for perfection. ‘Encanto’ is a colourful and moving story inspired by Gabriel García Márquez’s novel ‘One Hundred Years of Solitude’, which immerses the viewer in the magical Latin American universe.
On the occasion of his award, we invited filmmaker and illustrator Arly Jones, a collaborator of our teaching team, to analyse the concept art work of the film’s backgrounds.
According to Jones, in ‘Encanto’ we find one of the most beautiful and necessary messages that humanity can receive at a time like the present. A message located in a fictitious place in Colombia that could well be Macondo and exportable to the universal. And what better place than Colombia, in a constant process of reconciliation, to deal with the underlying theme of ‘Encanto’: forgiveness, reconciliation and starting over when everything has been lost.
The scenarios in this film are diverse and exuberant, and invite us to move from the closest to the most global. On the one hand, the closest is represented by an idyllic home environment, the Madrigal’s house. A construction with indigenous and colonial architectural features, a fact that emphasises the warmth of the environment (with wood, ceramics, hand-painted tile decoration). On the other hand, the more global is represented by the natural environment, which has a constant presence in the film. This fact helps to enhance the joy that resides within with vibrant colours.
A production with multiple references
Also striking for Arly Jones is the small homage that ‘Enchantment’ pays to the film saga directed by James Mangold and Steven Spielberg, ‘Indiana Jones’. This occurs when the protagonist of ‘Enchantment’. Mirabel enters “the cavern” to discover the secret that determines her mission. “The cavern is that moment in the structure of classic action movie scripts when the hero discovers his talisman, regains his strength and faces his final battle,” Jones explained.
This cavern is also a magical space, totally antagonistic to the family home, where the unnamable, Uncle Bruno, hides. A particular lair, dark and dirty, but of a certain comfort. Inevitably one is reminded of the cell of the Count of Monte Cristo, in the classic adventure novel by Alexandre Dumas, or of the escape tunnels in the film ‘The Great Escape’, directed by John Sturges.
Finally, there is another moment of magical surroundings: the river. The waters that flow into the sea. This is the river where all was lost, where the shadows of the horsemen of the apocalypse still loom. And it is, at the same time, the space where empathy for our elders gives rise to hope.