All’s Well That Ends Well reminded me so much of Ella Enchanted because the focus was on Helena, the orphan daughter
who falls madly in love with Count Bertram but feels like she has no chance
because he is a nobleman while she is part of the lower class. As well as the
rejection Count Bertram gives her because she has no higher statues.
The
same issue can be seen when viewing the movie Ella Enchanted because the plot starts off showing how Ella’s
mother passes away and is cared for by her thoughtless and greedy father who
remarries but eventually passes away as well and she ends up getting mistreated
by her step mother and step sisters who make her clean and do chores all day.
In Ella Enchanted,
Ella relates to Helena in the sense that she starts growing feelings towards
prince Charmont who all the girls think of as dreamy but they know he is out of
their reach. The scene of the movie that most relates to the play is the scene
where Ella and prince Charmont are standing in in the mirror garden and she
loves him so much that she is trying to find the will power not to stab him,
but when she finally succeeds he ends up rejecting her and she is taken away.
After being taken away she does everything in her power to see him again and
try to talk to him in order to explain her actions. When finally doing so they
work things out and end up together and happily married.
The movie is different in many ways but I felt like it
was a modern-day, fantasy Cinderella story which included lots of twists and
turns but overall covered the basics of what Shakespeare’s play All’s Well That Ends Well tried to
cover. We even got to see how Count Bertram who was a player related so much to
prince Charmont in the movie of Ella
Enchanted.. Both the play and the film focused on love, betrayal, and
rejection.
You know, I never thought of it that way until you brought it up. And now that I think about it, it makes perfect sense. Both characters have similarities. Now, granted, I have not fully seen the movie, but I have seen enough of it to understand where you are coming from. Both stories have love, in which one character pursues another character against obstacles pushed in front of them. Both have a sense of betrayal in the Stories, whether it be Ella and Prince Charmont or Helena and the others of the story. And of course, both face rejection.
ReplyDeleteIt leaves one to wonder what Shakespeare would have thought of this movie and whether or not he would see the similarities between the two.