We were listening to the Frozen 2 soundtrack in the bus the other day, and when Anna’s song “The Next Right Thing” came on, my husband commented on the depth of kids films these days. “Movies are so different now than they were when we were kids,” he said. I agree completely. Movie writers today seem to be able to address hard things with more intention and purpose than before.
This short interaction got me thinking a little more about The Jungle Book, so I rewatched parts of the original animated film to refresh my memory. I’ll save you all the details of what I thought and felt while watching, but from my perspective, the dismissal of grief is rampant throughout the movie. There were so many opportunities for the writers to have constructively addressed grief as it unfolded in Mowgli’s story. Instead, they tended to “brush it off” and “move on” rather than help the characters and the audience process the wild things that took place. I felt pretty disconnected from the characters while watching it. I noticed how I felt on the outside of the story, whereas some films of today draw viewers in to experience it with the characters.
In Frozen 2, Anna’s verbal processing of all the loss she has experienced up to this point, and the heaviness she carries for what she has to do next, gets directly to the core of how grief affects us. I’ve never heard another song normalize this truth in a more beautifully holistic way: it is natural to be overcome with grief and depression for as long as it takes. It is also natural to desperately hope to survive to see the other side and to do everything in your power to get there, while still feeling utterly grief-stricken and depressed.
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