In recent years, there’s been a trend among Disney movies to tell these large sprawling stories that explore the world they’re in while also acting as a means of building the protagonist’s character arc. Usually in the story something will threaten the protagonist’s home or way of life, so they need to go on a journey to prove themselves and/or try to solve the problem, and end up growing as a character in the process. We’ve seen it many times in the last two decades, from Moana, to Raya and the Last Dragon, The Princess and The Frog, Bolt, Brave, both Frozen films, the list goes on depending on how much you want to stretch the definition of this story structure. However, Disney’s newest film Encanto breaks this mold with its intimate setting and the fact that the entire film takes place in the Casita and its village, primarily amongst the Madrigal Family.
Encanto follows Mirabel as she lives in the magical Casita, a living house that sprung from the ground when her Abuela received a miracle, with her family who all have special powers as a result. Unfortunately though, Maribel is only one to never have received a miracle gift, and when faced with her younger cousin Antonio receiving his gift, Maribel finds herself wishing for a miracle to come along for her. She desperately wants something to change her life and make her feel included in the family again. It is then that she sees that the Casita is slowly falling apart and the magic of the miracle the family once received is fading. This appears as though this is an answer to her calling, and she decides to take it upon herself to figure out why this is happening and how to put a stop to it. In a typical Disney film, this is where the protagonist would leave home to find the source of the magic and stop the threat; however this is actually where the story starts subtly reinforcing its themes of being honest with oneself instead.
The message of the film centers around the fact that nobody in the Madrigal family is honest with themselves or one another, they all feel the need to keep up appearances and play the designated role in the family instead of voicing their concerns or problems. Throughout the film Maribel slowly starts learning of the internal struggles of the rest of the family. Starting with her sister Luisa, Maribel realizes she is actually feeling crushed by the pressure placed onto her as being the resident strongwoman of the family and town. Luisa feels as though she isn’t worth anything to the family without her gift, and she is slowly succumbing to the pressure she is constantly under but doesn’t feel like she can voice. Maribel’s other sister Isabela is experiencing similar feelings in secret, as she is the “perfect” sister who is always expected to be flawless. She is going into an arranged marriage because she believes it’s what is good for the family, not voicing what she wants because she feels obligated to keep up the appearance of the perfect daughter. This is where the center of the problems with Casita are actually stemming from—nobody in the Madrigal family is being seen for who they truly are and what they actually feel, and this is causing literal rifts in the Casita’s foundation.
Bruno is another victim of the misunderstandings that exist within the Madrigal family, and him never actually leaving Casita is both a reflection of this, as well as a further manifestation of how Casita mimics the struggles within the family. Bruno is able to have visions of the future, but because of that everybody in the Casita and the town blamed him for the bad things that happened to them, because they believed that him saying it is what made it happen (he’s the embodiment of the phrase “don’t shoot the messenger”). Bruno himself starts to believe this and after he has a vision about Maribel that he feels nobody will understand he leaves. The entire family believes he is long gone and they continue to ignore his existence and villainize him because of this betrayal they feel as a result. However, Bruno never actually left, and instead he lives in the walls of the Casita because he truly loves his family so much. The twist of him still living in the house illustrates how much he cares for his family, but also how much they did not understand who he actually was on the inside. His “disappearance” and internal struggles of being misunderstood are just as much a part of the Casita’s, and by extension the Madrigal’s, foundational troubles, whether the family is aware of it or not.
The central conflict of the narrative ends up actually being that so many of the family members feel trapped in the expectations placed upon them and can’t leave or move out of their designated box or role in the family, and this feeling is mirrored by the fact that the characters never truly leave the Casita or its town. In all actuality, Mirabel ends up spending more time in the film trying to figure out how to solve the problem of the house breaking down than actually solving it, which can make the film’s pace feeling like it’s treading water instead of progressing. However, the way that the plot feels stagnant mirrors the suffocation and stagnation of being in the Madrigal family, where nobody feels like they can truly air their grievances or be themselves, and keeping the setting intimate and small is the only way this feeling could have been achieved. The Madrigal family members are constantly defined by their powers and gifts, to the point where many of them feel unsure of who they would be without them. Having the setting be a visible manifestation of their internal struggles and relationships is the most effective way to make their character arcs feel as gigantic in scale, proportionally, as a giant sprawling adventure of finding oneself.
Alongside this, the fact that the plot ended up being centered around a series of internal conflicts mirrored in the film’s small scale reinforces the idea that the only thing they needed was each other, and that since the Casita is the embodiment of their family, its foundation cracking is illustrative of both the internal struggles everyone is feeling but won’t say, but also of the solution to the problem. They needed to fix the literal foundations of their familial relationships. Though in the beginning the story acts like it is setting up Maribel to go on this big journey to prove that she is just as special as everyone else in the family, the truth is that Maribel didn’t need to prove herself, what she actually needed was to pull her family back together again. For Encanto, a huge and world-exploring adventure of self discovery would not have served the purpose and messages they were trying to illustrate in the film; instead, the intimate setting both enhanced and reflected the conflict, and by extension its resolution, in a way that would not have been possible on such a large scale.
