Maleficient: Movie

The movie that we have chosen to be discussed under the theory of modernism is Maleficent (2014) and based on this movie, it can be seen that there are elements of modernism which can be detected throughout the whole story. The movie is about Maleficent, who is a fairy and she had put a curse on Princess Aurora because of the revenge and grudge towards her father. The curse that would make her fall asleep forever would happen on her sixteenth birthday when she pricked her finger.
The first element of modernism which can be found in this movie is the unreliable narrator. In other words, the whole story is narrated from only one point of view where this movie does not apply the omniscient external narrator technique. Only by the end of the movie, the identity of the narrator is revealed which happens to be the Sleeping Beauty; Princess Aurora. This is quite different from other movies as the narrator would usually be someone who is not one of the characters in order to remain the objectivity of the movies. Attempting to be different from other typical movies, in Maleficent, the narrator is one of the characters. Thus, the story revolves around her as seen from her point of view. The reason why only at the end of the story the identity of the narrator is revealed is because to make the movie appear objective and not bias towards any character right from the beginning until the end of the story. By the end of the story, the narrator said that definitely she would know about this story because she is the Sleeping Beauty.

Another element of modernism in this movie can be seen through the characters. In most of the fairy-tale movies that have been produced, the protagonist is usually the hero and becomes the main focus of the story such as in Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. However, in Maleficent, it is the other way around where the villain (Maleficent) is the main character in that movie and the king (King Stefan) who is supposed to be the protagonist, has been introduced as the antagonist. In addition, there is one scene in this movie where Maleficent put a curse on Princess Aurora and only true love kiss can break the curse. Typically, a prince will come and break the spell since it is a true love kiss but interestingly, in this movie, it is Maleficent who actually broke the spell. This is because of her endless devotion and affection towards Princess Aurora and this part depicts that true love does exist. Thus, Maleficent is considered to be a modernist film because it does not follow the traditional plot of a fairy-tale movie where there are elements of unreliable narrator and plot twist at the end of the movie.