
In my humble opinion, I still believe Ever After: A Cinderella Story to be the best Cinderella story ever told on screen. This may seem strange for people who know me simply because this version has none of the "magic" of other versions, at least on a fantastical level, but I find it infinitely more relatable and poignant than any other telling I've experienced.


What I love about 2015's Ella is that she represents an idea almost foreign now, that women can be strong and they don't need to be boyish and sword-wielding to be so. Ella is gentle, kind, feminine, sweet, and courageous. Her mantra handed down from her mother is "have courage and be kind" and she certainly lives up to that. Ella fights hard for her values with a spirit that doesn't break even under the cruelty and demeaning abuse of her step-family.

Though I do understand that to a point. One of my other issues with Cinderella is that I find everyone to be a little overdone, soap opera-esque in appearance. Even Ella at her dirtiest looks ready for the runway. I'd like to see something a little grittier and truer to how hard life would really be for Cinderella, which brings me to...
Danielle de Barbarac. The feisty heroine of Ever After. Though Danielle was taught the art of swordplay and defense from her father, that isn't what you remember most about her. She reads, and reads, and reads! Danielle is incredibly intellectual and also built with the same resilience to face hard labor, emotional abuse, and rejection. Ever After's characters are generally more down to earth and relatable. They don't look like they're fresh off the red carpet, they look like real people would living in that period time.
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The two princess & their country girls in secret gardens. ♥ |

Ever After also does something no other Cinderella story does (except maybe Ella Enchanted) it shows the Prince and Cinderella developing a relationship over time. The two don't agree on everything, and their disagreements make for fantastic chemistry. The prince has never been resisted by anyone and Danielle challenges him from the moment she knocks him off of his horse by throwing an apple to the moment she tells the truth about who she is in front of the entire court at the ball. Their exchanges and interactions are filled with wit and sensuality. The text is intellectual banter, the subtext is smoldering passion.
This is something 2015's film tried to do, but I think because of the nature of the target audience and also this recent tendency to rush storytelling in films these days kind of ruined their chance of really making a juicy connection between Cinderella and her prince. They had good moments and I could tell the creators were trying to go for that same idea, but unfortunately the mission wasn't fully accomplished.
This image is similar to the ending of Ever After, but different in theme. Ever After's identity crisis comes from an
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I kneel before you not as a prince, but as a man in love... |
The last thing I want to delve into is the themes and representations of parental love and vice. In both films our Cinderellas are very close to their fathers and bonded by that love. This is a story concept most versions of the story have, but what I like about these two versions is that they don't leave the prince out of the narrative.
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A son and his father. |
The contrast to this parental love is found in the step-mothers. I am glad both of these films choose to show that there's more to them than just being the wicked step-mother. Though these women are abusive, manipulative, bitter, and unloving, there are moments that show you very clearly they are flesh and blood with truly beating hearts. Both Baroness Rodmilla de Ghent of Ever After and Lady Tremaine of Cinderella are women who have known grief and are forced to get by in times when women, especially widowed women, were pretty darn low on society's totem pole. Their drive to survive is completely understandable, even if their methods are inexcusable.
Tremaine wears green throughout the film to represent envy. |
In both films there is a theme of jealousy and envy in the step-mothers. They are jealous of the qualities of goodness, kindness, and newness that both Danielle and Ella have. This is in addition to the hurt of never feeling a depth of love from their departed second husbands that they hoped for and always feeling second-place. These women have tasted despair and hardship. They've lost their first husbands whom they professed to love and then are left alone with two daughters in a very male dominated society in which they could not earn their own income to survive.

We can feel sorry for them, but only to a point. The lesson they teach us is that jealousy and envy are the root of wickedness and that we cannot choose our circumstances, but we can choose how we respond to them. These step-mothers could have loved their step-daughters as their own. They could have had happiness and worked together to make a life in their home after so much grief. Instead they abused and misused their step-daughters and because of this cruelty brought further despair to their houses. In our own circumstances we can choose be courageous and kind like Cinderella or we can be bitter and envious like the step-mother.
The Cinderella story is one of the most beloved and common of all time, I believe expressly because of it's themes and morals. Dressing in rags and serving doesn't make you low, it is the heart on the inside that decides that. I highly recommend both of these films. Ever After still remains on my top favorite films of all time.
Have you seen them both? Which is your favorite? Or do you prefer another version? Let me know in the comments below!
Alexis xx