I read the book as this release came nearer, and I thought that while good, it was clearly a ‘first big passion project that grew in scope and theme in the telling’. And that resulted in a charming work, but also one that could be refined and sharpened if given a second go around and seen by experienced eyes. Well, this movie did that and then some. It’s an affecting allegorical fairy tale for our time, one I honestly sorely needed after all that happened today.
If there’s one word to sum it up, it’s unapologetic. There’s a very big reason Disney didn’t take this on, yes, but there’s a whole lot smaller ones too. This is daring in a way their work hasn’t been allowed to be in years, if not a decade or two. A gay romance is one of its centerpieces, but it also tackles the fear of the other hurting so many today, the classism holding so many down, how it’s rooted institutionally, how you can’t just play nice and appease them. Balister did everything right, he played by the rules, he excelled, he gives them chance after chance, but that’s never going to be enough. The system and those behind it will toss you aside because you don’t belong.
Riz Ahmed plays him perfectly, making what could’ve been a stick in the mud such fun to listen to, and displaying his journey from lost and tossed aside golden boy to a man who’s found strength in the truth and most of all, his friend. In conjunction with the most effective set of puppy dog eyes I’ve ever seen, you can’t help but feel and root for him. Beck Bennett is always a gem in any ensemble and gets some big laughs. Eugene Lee Yang was a sleeper hit- I didn’t expect a Try Guy to remind me so heavily of Crispin Freeman, and that is high praise. It’s not that he sounds like a discount version of him, but that he has a similar lived in earnestness and genuine personality amidst a theatrical and dramatic performance, somehow grounded and knightly all at once. And Conroy is a risible antagonist, one who has convinced herself her paranoia and prejudices are noble and for the greater good and all the worse for it. She does not consider herself a monster by any means, but an aggrieved martyr doing what must be done, and Conroy makes her real while not sympathetic to anyone but herself.
But the most striking performance of all, of course, is Chloe Grace Mortez as Nimona. She put her heart into this role and you can feel it. She straddles the line of what could’ve been either ‘softened and smoothed so as to lose all edges’ and ‘so obnoxious and bloodthirsty so as to lose empathy’, and makes it look easy, instead conveying a character who’s found her way to survive in a world that turned its back on her first. An inner pain at the heart of her rage, one that’s always hoping that she’ll be proven wrong. Or rather, proven right with what she first saw all those years ago- that people can accept and love something different. But the film also never frames her as in the wrong for pointing that anger where it belongs- at the system that props up what was done to her. Many films would’ve agreed the director was the only problem, but this one asserts that the institute and the wall that enables and created her must also be torn down. Mortez goes hand in hand with immaculate writing and gorgeous animation to craft a character who’s hilarious, heartfelt, and devastating. Nimona in motion is such a striking vibrancy against everything else, bringing a life and beauty and color they don’t see until the end. And it makes it such a gut punch when Nimona has lost hope and that pink is replaced with black and white.
There’s a lot of ways Nimona resonates with today. The Director exclaiming Balister has a weapon is a subtle, brief one that only lasts a minute but hits like a punch to the gut. There’s Nimona defending herself being taken as self evident proof she is a monster. There’s her suicide attempt, where the rampage in the book is a path of vengeance here it’s just a last resort after once again losing everything and being rejected on a fundamental level. All that is one reason Disney wouldn’t take this on. But another is it’s sense of humor, or in acknowledging that yes kids know what blood is and many like it and they can handle it. The movie’s not a bloodbath by any means, but blood is just. There! Gay people are there! This movie, despite Disney, despite the conservative backlash against queer children’s media, is here. Saying you are seen. You are not alone. It’s something I think a lot of people, of any age, needed to hear today, and will need to hear in the future. I know I’m one of them.
