The Cycle Ends Here: A Review of Disney's Encanto by Elise Peyrat

If you’ve had the chance to go to the cinemas, or perhaps you have Dinsey+, then you must have caught Disney’s latest, Encanto. Directed by Byron Howard and Jared Bush, it tells the colourful story of a magical family living in a magical house in the Colombian foothills, their one non-magical daughter, Mirabel, and the inexplicability of the house suddenly starting to fall apart.

If you, like me, caught the trailer and were enchanted by this house that clicks its tiles to help make tea and waves its blind to say hello, you’ve probably thought, eh, another magical, fantastical, Disney movie like the others before. Shrugged it off, maybe put it on your watchlist and forgot to make plans to see it. I had planned to catch it with friends but these ended up falling through and, a few days before I was due to leave the country for Christmas break, I went to see it alone and I am very glad, as I believe it is truly one of Disney’s best.

Before the movie starts, Disney adds one of its shorts — like it had with Bao before The Incredibles 2 —, a short animated film titled Far From the Tree featuring a raccoon foraging with its mother until curiosity almost gets the raccoon killed. Then this raccoon grows up and repeats its mother’s pattern of refusing to tell its child what to be scared of, just trying to protect them without letting them explore their curiosity. The raccoon realises this and makes amends, very cute, very touching. If breaking the cycle of generational trauma makes you emotional, strap in, because Encanto is all about that.

With an original score by Germaine Franco and original songs by Lin Manuel Miranda, Encanto starts with a musical number retelling the history of ‘la familia Madrigal’, from the aunt with the ability to manifest clouds reflecting her emotions, to the sister with superhuman strength, to the shapeshifting cousin, and strikes many as accurate representation of Colombian people, with large noses, with dark skin, with receding red hair genes, with typically indigenous features, and traditional clothing.

Encanto also depicts family dynamics relatable to many, with a headstrong grandmother as the matriarch, with the ostracised tío no one is allowed to mention, with a relationship to food deep-rooted in culture, that many, even non-Hispanic, can relate to. However, Encanto also deals with the issue of generational trauma, which might be relatable to any family, but in this specific case, is deeply rooted in Colombian history.

Abuela recounts to Mirabel, in the very first scene, her story of having to flee her home with her husband and her three newborn children in what is assumed to be the Thousand Days War that shook Colombia in the turn of the century. She reveals that her husband, Abuelo Pedro, was killed and that through her grief, a miracle happened, changing her handheld candle into an ‘encanto’, a vessel through which her family and house were given magical abilities.

However, the consequences of this deeply traumatic event on her is only shown later in the movie as it is revealed she is the one causing the encanto to lose its power by pushing everyone to be perfect. Many characters reveal in their songs that they are shouldering burdens to please Abuela, because they love their family, by getting married, by carrying more than they can shoulder, by leaving the family to protect it. When the family, and the house, finally crumble under the weight of these responsibilities, Abuela finds herself returning to the place her husband was killed and we finally see her version of the event, her non adulterated, non-smoothed out retelling of this terrible traumatic event in which she had to witness her husband brutally murdered.

We understand that all Abuela does she does to protect her family, but because of this trauma and her lack of support throughout it, she finds herself repeating a cycle of abuse that can often happen in many families who have lived through violent historical conflicts. Many have classified Abuela as the villain, for lack of proper villain throughout the movie, but this fails to acknowledge that Abuela was a victim, and that this issue is not to be diminished by white audiences who have no such experience.

Encanto is a wonderful movie that depicts a relatable experience that is breaking the cycle of generational trauma, but Latine audiences are having to fend off the movie from white audiences trying to make it relatable to them, by imagining it framed in the context of homophobia or ableism, thus taking the story out of its original context which is deeply ingrained in Latin American history.

For the breakers of cycles, this one’s for you, available on Disney+ on demand.

Words by Elise Peyrat.