Disney’s relationship with Latin America is long-standing. Greetings, friends (1942) e I three Knights (1944), Disney’s sixth and seventh feature films respectively were shot for the good neighborhood policy with Latin America commissioned by the US State Department. Both had Donald Duck as protagonist and Josè Carioca, an anthropomorphic parrot from Rio destined to become very popular in Disney comics made in Brazil, made its debut.
But, when in 2017 it comes out Coco, a lot has changed. In the past decades there has been a very strong immigration to the States from Latin America, and there has been the so-called vein of magical realism at least starting with ‹‹ 100 years of solitude ›› (1967), a masterpiece by the Colombian writer Gabriel Garcia Marquez .
Technically it is a Pixar film but absolutely imbued with a Disney spirit. Twelve-year-old Mexican Miguel Rivera dreams of becoming a musician, maybe a mariachi (the famous street musicians), his idol is Ernesto de la Cruz, dead for years, the greatest Mexican musician, appeared in many films of the past. But his family loathes music, and Miguel will find his way on a journey to the realm of the dead during El dia de los muertos, Mexican folklore’s Day of the Dead.
Charm, the sixtieth Disney feature film, directed by Byron Howard, Jared Bush and Charise Castro Smith, in cinemas from November 24, takes up the atmosphere of Coco and also, in some ways, her plot. The Madrigal family lives in an enchanted city in the mountains of Colombia that is very reminiscent of the Macondo di One hundred years of solitude (and the Madrigals themselves have some analogies with the Buendia of the novel).
It is a matriarchal family, Abuela (grandmother) Alma has fled, with her husband and children and other people, from disturbing assailants (perhaps militants of a past dictatorship rather than mere outlaws). Her husband was killed, but they stumbled upon a magical house and a candle that gave the children special power. Since then the Madrigal family has prospered, when the right age comes each Madrigal discovers that he has a unique ability: it can be super strength, as for Luisa, or creating flowers, as for the fascinating Isabela. The very young Mirabel, however, unlike her sisters and other relatives, has not received any power and is considered the pariah of the family, a bit like Miguel of Coco.
Uncle Bruno had a power, that of seeing the future, but he was not well accepted by others, he became a pariah like her and excluded himself from the Madrigals. In the family he cannot be named, he is seen as a disturbing and lucky person.
Mirabel, however, realizes that the magic is threatened: the house is falling apart and the candle flame itself threatens to go out (and the magic depends on the flame). Only she can save the magic. In Charm we are really in the territories of magical realism (perhaps it would be better to say “magical unrealism”) with very bright colors and many songs in the classic Disney tradition (it’s a musical). A perfectly Disney-like “magical unrealism”: even Mirabel, like Miguel of Coco she is excluded. And the same uncle Bruno, found by her, turns out to be nice and affable, anything but disturbing.
Perhaps the main virtue of the film, the fact that it has no real villains (Abuela is a partially negative character, but then regrets having been hard on Mirabel and Bruno) is also its flaw: it lacks an authentic battle with a final climax.
But, after all, we are not in the country of the gringos, we are in Latin America: And it is nice to be stunned by the music, by the colors, by the film which is at the same time a long fiesta and a hymn to the value of family.