I walked into Snow White & the Huntsman with the honest thought that there is no reason for it to be good... The second re-imagining of Snow White in as many months, this time as a big-budget, epic action/adventure spectacle? Pshaw. Perhaps it was just the suffocating air-headedness of this season's summer offering thus far draining my optimism and conditioning me to expect to just not give a damn about what I'm watching, because not only was this new Snow White the first movie of the summer that has kept me from dozing off for a cool five minutes, but it also seemed surprisingly fresh and original at times.
And why wouldn't an adventurous take on Snow White be good? While I'm not familiar with the actual fairy tale, I have seen the Disney film, and anyone who's truly honest will admit that something needed to be done differently than it was in that overrated albeit gorgeously animated classic. In this incarnation we see the dark side of Charlize Theron in a brilliantly-conceived performance as Ravenna, who seduces her way into marrying the king of an unnamed land, killing him, and locking his daughter, Snow White (a sometimes bland, sometimes rousing Kristen Stewart), away for years, while she steals the youth of the land's maidens. Snow White's number comes up when Ravenna discovers that Snow's heart will grant her eternal youth, and after Snow escapes into the dark woods, Ravenna coerces The Huntsman, a grieving drunkard of a widower (played with the humor and gentle masculinity that I've come to appreciate from Chris Hemsworth) into bringing Snow back alive.
It's a rather simple premise, but I find myself abundantly willing to continue laying it all out, but a good movie is not about the what, but about the how, and Snow White is, for better or worse, pleasingly fundamental. Director Rupert Sanders, perhaps thanks to clear-cut fairy tale conventions, gives us instantly understandable characters whose motivations are never ambiguous, yet lets each of his actors add touches that transform dangerously stock characters into real people... who happen to live in a fantasy world where magic exists. Sanders makes us care about what happens to these people, even though we essentially already know, something that seems to be a difficulty among recent action spectacles. He takes the time to introduce us to this world and its narrative, before slinging the giant trolls and mischievously hostile dwarfs upon us, and mercifully keeps the CGI to a minimum, using it only when necessary, while most of the time focusing on actual sets and props, and flesh-and-blood people.
Most impressive of all, Sanders manages to make this large-scale epic feel somewhat low-key and personal, bathing his characters in seemingly natural light and using a lot of effective handheld camera-work to draw us in. Visually, it's absolutely hypnotic. While generally solid all-around, Snow White is certainly at its best when carving its own unique way through the material. It's handling of the dwarfs is inspired, to say the least. I'm not sure how the filmmakers pulled it off, but they cast half a dozen of the best character actors to play them, and somehow made them look absolutely believable at half their actual height. I spent the second half the film in awe of whatever sorcery resulted in Ian McShane and Toby Jones appearing to be three-feet tall and still be able to carry dramatic weight.
Banal narration in the prologue aside, even the moments Snow White feels boxed in by its limiting conventions are handled with subtle grace. Surprised to find myself so involved in the film two-thirds of the way through, I started to cringe when anticipating how the mythical true love's kiss that revives Snow White after biting the poisoned apple would be handled, only to be soothed by its tenderness and sincerity. The scene is followed immediately by another potentially cringeworthy call to arms, by Snow White herself, that blindsided me into a rousing sympathy for the cause.
Though somewhat standard at times, Snow White & the Huntsman elects for smaller, more emotionally engaging and perceptually intriguing moments, rather than never-ending, CGI-filled, mindlessly droning action sequences, and it's all the better for it. A technical wonder with occasional short periods of narrative dullness, it's quite memorable, if not downright extraordinary.
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