What I Learned From the Painful Family Dynamics of Disney’s Encanto

Written February 22nd, 2014.

The first time I watched it, there was something bothering me about Disney’s Encanto. The story of the movie is pretty standard Disney fare, full of magic and whimsy: in this case, a young Colombian family is given a magical gift as a result of a miracle, and as they come of age, each child and grandchild since the Miracle happened receives a “gift”, a magical ability or power. The story chronologically begins with the 1964 Colombian Civil War. Alma, her three infant children, and some dozens of villagers, flee the violence. Pedro, Alma’s husband, is killed off-screen by unidentified cavalrymen in the river. What side were they on, why did they kill him? What politics did Pedro have? We don’t know, and it doesn’t matter. Alma’s candle begins to glow in a miracle after Pedro is murdered, taking on a butterfly motif of markings, and that miracle creates a house in a valley for them to live in. Casita, a child’s word for house. A literal magic house, which I and others read as being powered by the spirit of Pedro. Casita might actually be her husband, as it responds to Alma’s will and does what she wants.

Either way, Alma is a young woman who along with three babies and a candle, magically creates a village for dozens of war refugees to live safely, and more importantly in isolation, from the rest of the world. The valley is impassable, protecting Alma, her family, and her people, but it also metaphorically strands the village in time, where it will always be 1964 in a way. It is magically protected, so the Encanto valley does not progress technologically. The architecture remains the same, 50 years later. There are no radios, no TVs, no Wi-Fi, no airplanes in Encanto. It is cut off from the rest of the world. It is a valley magically frozen in ice, it will not change or grow. As a result of Alma creating a new home for refugees, the familia Madrigal have become the de facto rulers, a noble family, the head family, of the newly created Encanto valley in Colombia. It is their noblesse oblige, their “noble responsibility” as its rulers, to protect the valley. This is the problem, and it almost sneaks up on the viewer. One does not initially expect that this will be the big issue, but 50 years later, in 2014, the film begins, and so does the film’s conflict.

Immediately we are presented with Mirabel, the only member of the clan Madrigal who doesn’t have a gift. Why she does not have one is the central conflict of the film. When she was little and it was her turn to receive her gift, she was told, “Strengthen our family, strengthen our home. Make your family proud.” And then it did not come, to Abuela’s horror. Nobody understands why, and it’s essential to understand from the framing that Mirabel grew up convinced that the failure to receive a gift is somehow her fault. Everyone else gets a magical gift to help them survive and thrive. Every morning, Mirabel says to herself, “Make your family proud.” It is Abuela’s command, and Mirabel’s raison d’etre, her reason for being. When asked by local children what her power is, what makes Mirabel special, she sings about being part of the familia. That is what is important to Mirabel, them, not herself. Mirabel sublimates her own needs and desires, obsessed with being helpful, because that is how she has coped with not having a magical power. There is a read here where the magical powers granted by the miracle are a metaphor for privilege and social capital, where the men who marry into the family take the name Madrigal. It is a matrilineal family lineage. It is their honor to join la familia Madrigal. Who those suitors are, who they were, who the men’s families are, doesn’t matter. They are peasants, honored to join Madrigal. That is power, and that is what Abuela created, but a house of cards can only stand for so long.

When Mirabel begins to see cracks appearing in Casita’s walls and floors after Antonio’s ceremony (where he received the power to talk to and befriend all animals), she panics and tries to tell them, but Casita also appears to resist the cracking and trying to hold itself together, masking the problem and making Mirabel appear to be a liar. As an odd girl out, as the only un-gifted family member, Mirabel is framed as a problem child. She is clumsy, well-meaning, and there is no problem with any of this. But Abuela is not having it, somehow Mirabel is the problem. She is desperate to be the perfect granddaughter, and as she begins to gently probe her cousins Luisa, Dolores, and Isabel that she thinks something is wrong with the magic, it is shut down. The cousins shut the conversation down, the parents and uncle and aunt advise Mirabel not to say anything, and Abuela is desperate to reassure the people of the enchanted valley that nothing is wrong, and the magic is fine.

When she hears rumors from cousin Dolores of her uncle Bruno, who disappeared from the family after the village turned on him, she begins to ask about him. This prompts one of the most popular songs to come out of Disney in years, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno”. Why don’t the people discuss Bruno? Because his prophecies come true, and they all have been told futures that they didn't like, leading the town to reject Bruno, and Abuela to condemn him. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is an encapsulation of the film’s conflict. It is the status quo of Encanto village. It is the reason why Alma’s only son is banished, forced to live in the walls of Casita, with only his imagination, a few props, and three sympathetic rats as his only means of staving off insanity from loneliness and isolation. Bruno is Alma’s first victim, the first time she bent to the will of the village, sacrificing her child to unknown decades of solitary confinement. Why did Abuela cast out Bruno? It is unclear. But he is the beginning of the process of the candle going out, the Casita crumbling, and the problem that Mirabel is driven to fix.

As Mirabel continues to ask questions, the family begins to lose their powers. Luisa’s gargantuan strength begins to fade, she sobs in confusion and fear as she realizes the donkeys became heavy for her. Mirabel discovers green shards inside the walls of Casita, hidden in impossible amounts of sand, forcing Mirabel to escape from some weird sand trap, where the room is filling with sand and will crush her, in what is a very dissonant dungeon scene in an otherwise lighthearted film. Bruno rescues his niece, and reveals himself in his arguably not self-imposed exile. He is lonely, shattered, emotionally crippled, and filled with both guilt and resentment for having been cast out for being himself. Bruno is what Mirabel could become. He helps Mirabel understand the dark side of the world Abuela has constructed. He tells her, using his magical powers, that she needs to help fix Casita by hugging and reconciling with Isabel, her sister who is constantly critical of Mirabel. Mirabel resents Isabel, because she is “the perfect child”, someone for whom nothing goes wrong, and she does everything perfectly. In trying to honor Bruno‘s wishes and help her family, Mirabel confronts Isabel, only to realize that Isabel is deeply unhappy. She is under so much pressure trying to be perfect, that her haughty, holier-than-thou attitude is basically Isabel trying to be the person that she thinks Abuela wants Isabel to be.

When Mirabel realizes this, she turns all of her resentment into empathy for her sister. Mirabel is no longer alone, what she feels towards Abuela is felt by someone else, and she cements a healthier bond with her sister by accepting Isabel’s desires to create something other than flowers, to not be perfect, to “let her hair down” and be herself. This is the same thing Mirabel has always wanted for herself. Isabel attempts to reconcile with Mirabel, realizing how much she enjoys being with Mirabel and how well they get along. This reconciliation changes Isabel’s power. She no longer produces only pretty flowers as Abuela wants, but also produces other plants, including cacti, (one of which sprouts quickly and tall, breaking a man’s nose) to Abuela’s horror. Abuela does not appear to want the magic to change. This is rude, irregular, and not according to her plan. Abuela has spent a long time arranging a marriage between Isabel and Mariano, a local attractive man, whom Dolores would actually prefer to be with, but this is not what Abuela wants. Alma has decided that Mariano is a good match for Isabel, not Dolores, and everyone has to go with it. Abuela’s word is law.

Mirabel also attempts to appeal to Luisa, her super-strong sister, leading to “No Pressure”, the other hit song from the film. Through the song’s lyrics, Mirabel is told how much pressure Luisa is also under, how she takes all of the stress, the drama, the insecurities of her family, putting them on herself to prevent the family from confronting their problems. They dump their issues onto Luisa, who shoulders so much of the generational trauma, the pressure of her parents’ and Abuela’s expectations. Mirabel simply responds with a hug, realizing how much her sister needed to vent, to release this pressure by voicing her frustration and concerns. Generational trauma is the theme of the film, to understand that people will often let their own pain, their problems, affect future generations by how you treat your family. The girls’ aunt, who can change the weather with her mood, is literally a neurotic mess. Her sister, Mirabel’s mother, is laser focused on healing other people and making them feel better, to compensate for the fact that most of the family is too scared to deal with the underlying trauma, everyone except for Mirabel and Bruno. This is why they are the black sheep of the family.

Mirabel later takes the green shards and assembles them in her room, just as her father walks in to speak to Mirabel. He sees the shards and realizes that whatever Mirabel is doing, it is bad. The shards form a picture of Mirabel standing inside of Casita as it crumbles. The picture is revealed accidentally during dinner to Abuela, who loses her cool and begins to condemn Mirabel for her incessant curiosity. Alma lashes out, yelling at Mirabel for meddling in things that Abuela would rather stay hidden. She actually says, “You are the problem in this family!” To which Mirabel responds, “Nothing I do will ever be good enough for you.” Why? Holy shit, why? That is the moment that I broke into tears.

Holy shit, did that trigger some complicated emotions for me. I was so angry at Abuela for saying this. How could she? Doesn’t she understand that she is hurting Mirabel here? Lashing out at Mirabel for existing, for being who she is, not having a gift; this is actually Alma ripping apart her family dynamic. Yet again, Bruno’s vision is true. Mirabel was at the center of why the house crumbles, but not the cause of it as Mirabel assumes she is. This is the moment where the family becomes completely depowered, and the house shatters into rubble. Abuela is heartbroken, and Mirabel is horrified. This is the moment where Abuela’s rage turns to grief, and Mirabel’s self-loathing and guilt manifest. She runs to the river, believing that she has destroyed her family. She has internalized Abuela’s beliefs.

Abuela’s lashing out is an attempt to protect herself from the truth, that the pressure she puts on her children and grandchildren is destroying them. When Alma walks to the river, Mirabel likely fears that she will be banished as Bruno had been. She is the problem, Abuela was right, about everything. But finally, finally, instead of confirming the deepest fears of her granddaughter, Alma opens up to tell the truth. This river was the place where Pedro died, where the miracle happened for the first time. Alma was shattered here, and she put so much energy, love, fear, pain, desperation, hope, and grief into creating the house and the valley, that she lost sight of how to treat her family. She was so changed by escaping the war, obsessed with survival of her family at all costs, that she could not realize they were hurting. She didn’t know. Alma’s tearful admission is the emotional climax of the film, and as Mirabel sees a butterfly alighting onto a blade of grass, she realizes.

At first I had a really hard time with this. Abuela’s apology and explanation didn’t seem like enough. I didn’t forgive her, I couldn’t. How could I? She’s an abuser. She blamed everything, literally everything, on her innocent granddaughter whom Alma treated like shit for no fault of her own. It was not Mirabel’s fault she didn’t receive a gift. But Casita, or the Miracle, could not bestow a power under these expectations and judgements of Abuela to Mirabel. I believe that the reason Mirabel did not receive a magical power is because the metaphorical foundation of the family, Alma’s trauma, could not jive with who Mirabel was, with her forthright honesty and her willingness to confront painful truths. Mirabel is everything that Alma is not. She is unburdened by war trauma. She is honest. She will fight her entire family’s beliefs in order to save them. Mirabel has courage where Alma was a victim, and in this way they are complete opposites. This is why it is easy for Alma to lash out at Mirabel specifically. She represents the destruction of the generational trauma that Alma was unwittingly upholding. This is what the entire family was built on, so when the confrontation happens, the house crumbles because it needs to be rebuilt on something other than pain.

The film wants the viewer to realize that Alma isn’t the bad guy, she never was. This film has no Disney villain, only people hurting other people because they themselves were hurt. The hardest thing for me, I realized, was that I didn’t want to empathize with Alma. I wanted her to be the bad guy, and I wanted Alma to not be forgiven. I wanted her to realize that she hurt her family because she couldn't and didn’t deal with her pain, she suppressed it. The reason I wanted her to be “punished” by her family is because I didn’t trust Alma to grow, to do the right thing. I didn’t trust her to do the work to heal herself and her family. Those I love with whom I watched the film a second time pointed this out, and said that they believed she deserved that chance for redemption. I realized it was only my trauma holding me back from empathizing with Abuela. It was not difficult for Mirabel to empathize with Abuela because she loved her grandmother. I didn’t have that connection or love. I didn’t see Alma as a full, flawed person with a reason to be empathized with. She was a two-dimensional character for me because she was a character in a movie by definition.

But that doesn’t mean that I’m off the hook, either. I couldn’t empathize with her because I didn’t want to, I was getting in my own way. My trauma was blocking me from growth. Just like Alma. If I wanted to learn and grow, I had to trust her to do it too. That’s what growth is.