Issue 84 (2024) |
Aleksei Tsitsilin, Andrei Korenkov: The Snow Queen: Defrost (Snezhnaia koroleva: Zamorozka) reviewed by Lora Mjolsness © 2024 |
The Snow Queen: Defrost or The Snow Queen and the Princess, directed by Aleksei Tsitsilin and Andrei Korenkov, is the fifth film in the full-length animated series based very loosely on Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen (1844). The film premiered in Russia on February 16, 2023 with wider Russian release on March 30, 2023. Tsitsilin also directed the previous three films in the series: The Snow Queen 2: Refreezing (Snezhnaia koroleva. Perezamorozka, 2014); The Snow Queen 3: Fire and Ice (Snezhnaia koroleva: Ogon’ i led, 2016); The Snow Queen 4: Mirrorlands (Snezhnaia koroleva, Zazerkal’e, 2018, along with Robert Lance). The first film in the series. The Snow Queen (Snezhnaia Koroleva, 2012), was directed by Vladlen Barbe and Maksim Sveshnikov). With each subsequent film, the series distances itself more acutely from the original Danish tale, developing unique characters and plot turns that are distinct to the series. In The Snow Queen and the Princess, the appearance of the Snow Queen’s daughter, Ayla, is an unexpected addition.
The film opens in the Mirrorlands, the realm of the Snow Queen, who has been banished for her attempt to freeze the world. But she has become kinder and gentler with unexplained motherhood. The Snow Queen’s daughter, Ayla, is capricious, adventurous, but lonely. Her mother is desperate for Ayla to learn to control her powers and emotions to avoid repeating her mother’s past mistakes. However, the lure of friendship is stronger than her mother’s advice. One day mischievous, colorful, child-like troll-tourists travel to the Snow Queen’s world through a magical mirror portal. These trolls are quite different from Orm, the shape-shifting troll who acts as a minion to Snow Queen in the first film of the series. In Andersen’s original story, an evil troll (the devil) launches the events in the tale when he creates a mirror that has the power to show only the negative in people. This mirror breaks and pieces no bigger than sand fall back to earth, freezing peoples’ hearts. The Snow Queen film series has once again reimagined the trolls and mirror of Andersen’s tale.
These ice cream-loving trolls are mischievous, but also fascinating in Ayla’s eyes. In an attempt to befriend the trolls, Ayla brings them to a forbidden area where the Snow Queen has imprisoned the Ice Spirits in an underwater world. While showing off her skating and her bravado, Ayla accidentally cracks open a rift in the ice seal and three Ice Spirits emerge. The Ice Spirits, now free, terrorize the Snow Queen, Ayla, and the trolls, escaping into the land of humans through the trolls’ magical mirror portal. They begin to take revenge for their forced imprisonment by freezing everything and everyone with their icy breath. The Ice Spirits, not the Snow Queen, are the villains.
One of the major themes in Hans Christian Andersen’s original tale The Snow Queen is love and friendship, captured best when Gerda saves Kai from the clutches of the Snow Queen with a kiss. The theme of friendship is also one of the overarching themes of The Snow Queen and the Princess. Ayla must not only learn to harness her powers; she must also learn to make deep friendships and focus on teamwork and cooperation. While the Snow Queen temporarily manages to contain the other Ice Spirits in their underground world with her magical staff, she forces her daughter to follow the Ice Spirits into the human world, help the trolls close the portal, appeal to Gerda and Kai for help, and learn to control her magic. The Snow Queen fears that if the Ice Spirits are not stopped, she will be accused of purposely releasing them in light of her past villainy. Despite the animosity between the Snow Queen and Gerda in the original Andersen tale and the first three films of the series, these two formed a working relationship in the previous film, The Snow Queen: The Mirrorlands. The Snow Queen gives Ayla a magic disk, the Disk of the North Wind, to pass on to Gerda to help fight the Ice Spirits.
Ayla quickly befriends Gerda and Kai, brother and sister in the film series, by saving them from the Ice Spirits, however, friendship is not enough to save the world. She must also learn to trust her friends and work together. Gerda agrees (and Kai reluctantly) to accompany Ayla and the trolls to shut the magic mirror portal. However, when they return to the trolls’ cave, the magic book of wisdom has disappeared. Rollan, the magical artifact hunter, and Gerda’s love interest in The Snow Queen: The Mirrorlands, has stolen the book and is hiding out with the steam-punk pirate, Alfida, a modern reincarnation of the Robber Girl from Andersen’s tale. The Ice Spirits also attack the pirate ship, leading Gerda to convince both Rollan and the pirate gang to join together. Yet Ayla is still struggling to control her powers and understand friendship. On the pirate ship, Ayla tries to take on the Ice Spirits by herself in anger but fails.
The Snow Queen and the Princess has an unusually diversified cast for a Russian animation film. One of the pirates in Alfida’s gang is African. Another apparent nod to Andersen’s tale is the appearance of the “dark-skinned Fairy” in her magical garden, which is reminiscent of the Old Woman in her garden, who lures Gerda away from her quest to find Kai. In The Snow Queen and the Princess,Gerda even warns her friends that appearances can be deceiving as they enter the Fairy’s garden, which is the same moral message in Andersen’s tale.. The Fairy possesses a special elixir, which can increase magical power, nevertheless, she is unwilling to share the elixir until she is also attacked by the Ice Spirits. Ayla tries to take on the Ice Spirits herself in the garden, but fails, demonstrating once again the necessity for Ayla to learn the value of teamwork. Together, with the help of the Fairy, they defeat the three escaped Ice Spirits.
The Snow Queen and the Princess is much weaker in plot and visuals than The Snow Queen: The Mirrorlands. Tsitsilin co-directed Mirrorlands, with American Hollywood animator Robert Lance, who worked on Beauty and the Beast (1991), The Lion King (1994), Toy Story (1995), Shrek (2001) and others. The animation in Mirrorlands was much more fluid and visually appealing in comparison with The Snow Queen and the Princess. In fact, the fifth film in the series has a series of plot incongruencies and poor transitions, which affect the narrative. The appearance of Ayla, the Snow Queen’s daughter, is never explained. And Lake Gao, which was drained in a previous film, is now filled. Kai’s steampunk-inspired flying machine appears out of nowhere when needed and it also strangely jumps from a road to train tracks without a transition. When Kai is tied up in ropes, he falls, only to be unexpectedly back on his feet and fall again. In the fighting scenes with the Ice Spirits, Ayla protects the trolls from an approaching Ice Spirit, who attacks from the right, but the ice blast hits the group from the left. The budgets for the films were also quite different, with 356 million rubles for Mirrorlands and only 179 million rubles for The Snow Queen and the Princess. Yet there are still a few captivating scenes; for example, when Kai and Gerda approach the Pirate’s flying city.
In the end of the film Ayla learns to harness her magical powers, but most importantly she learns to work together as a team. Gerda, Kai and Ayla return with the elixir to the Mirrorlands to help the Snow Queen close the rift. However, the Snow Queen knows the price of the elixir, which drains the user’s life force, transforming it into magical power and killing the user. While the Snow Queen and Ayla attempt to repair the crack together, the Ice Spirit leader, Spirit of the North creates an army of Ice Trolls and then joins them. In a final attempt to stop the Ice Spirits, the Snow Queen sacrifices herself and drinks the elixir, yet she is still not strong enough. Gerda’s words from earlier in the film are played out: we can win, but only if we fight together and stand up for each other. The pirates, the fairy, and the trolls help fight the Ice Trolls, while the Snow Queen, Ayla, Gerda, Kai, and Rollan link themselves together increasing the power of the elixir but also dispersing the negative effect.
In the end, friendship and love save the world. Yet the power of the collective has not had the success previous films had abroad for the Voronezh Animation Studio, formally Wizart Animation. In the past, the series has been one of the most successful exports in the Russian film industry but, apparently, The Snow Queen and the Princess does not make the cut. However, the film is still being released abroad most recently in Italy, Brazil, and France.
Lora Mjolsness
University of California, Irvine
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The Snow Queen: Defrost (The Snow Queen and the Princess), Russia, 2023
Color, 75 minutes
Directors: Aleksei Tsitsilin, Andrei Korenkov
Screenplay: Andrei Korenkov, Aleksei Tsitsilin, Vladimir Nikolaev, Aleksei Zamyslov
Voices: Polina Voichenko, Maria Shustrova, Irina Chumant’eva, Yurii Romanov, Kostantin Panchenko, Svetlana Kusnetsova, Andrei Tenetko.
Producers: Sergei Sel’ianov, Vladimir Nikolaev
Production: Voronezh Animation Studio, CTB, Cinema Fund Russia
Aleksei Tsitsilin, Andrei Korenkov: The Snow Queen: Defrost (Snezhnaia koroleva: Zamorozka) reviewed by Lora Mjolsness © 2024 |