The Beauty and The Beast

As a child I hated this movie. It was one of those movies that made no sense at all. One of those movies that was so boring and took so much time to get to the point. One of those movies that simply made me want to fall asleep.

I also hated this movie because it made no logical sense and I couldn’t understand it with my child’s mind. I saw a beautiful young lady kidnapped in a castle with absolutely no hope. I saw a crazy monster that only screamed, yelled, kidnapped, cruelly treated others. I saw an extreme villain masqueraded under a hero, or at least a hero at the end of the movie. I couldn’t understand see any logical sense.

I saw an evil, handsome, and dumb villain Gaston. Usually Disney related being handsome to heroes and being ugly to villains, and I guess that spontaneous swap passing from The Little Mermaid to The Beauty and the Beast was a small fact that I didn’t like.

Now that I re-watched the movie I realized the deep meaning behind the story. I am viewing it through other eyes and I like it. I see a whole village developing: we get introduced to a lot of different people in the village and we burst that bubble where a fairytale is only about the hero and the villain. There is much more going on and we get to view it!

I also get to understand the meaning behind the love story that back when I was child I couldn’t even see: Disney was giving a different meaning of good and evil! First, a hero was not strictly linked to being beautiful and a villain was not related with being ugly anymore. Disney was breaking a new frontier with this movie and I find it interesting because we got to see past the physical appearance of someone. We got to understand that ugly didn’t necessarily mean bad nor beauty necessarily meant being good. Second, Disney was breaking the barrier of love and was looking into the heart of things. This movie shows us specifically that we fall in love with what someone had in the inside and not just by looking at someone and saying “he is cute, I’m in love with him” like what Ariel would do.

The Beauty and the Beast is a movie that now I see as a love story. It is a love story that starts with some fighting like any relationship (although it is pretty intense in the movie). Followed by a classic “you saved my life” scene when the Beast rescues the Beauty, Belle, from a wolf pack attack in the forest and ends with actions of love that totally transform the relationship from the inside out. It is a love story that I used to hate because I found uninteresting and boring but I know think that it is much more than what I thought it was!