Courageous And Kind – A Cinderella Story

If you haven’t already seen Disney’s newest release, the remake of Cinderella, make plans to go.  We highly recommend it to everyone but for other reasons than you might think!Though it is a film that children will surely love, people of all ages will enjoy this one.

This Cinderella story is not simply a rags to riches tale of  a poor girl who meets her handsome prince and lives happily ever after.  In this story, by our standards anyway, Cinderella is already rich long before she meets up with Prince Charming.  She is rich in all the right ways and with those things that no amount of money will ever be able to buy.

As the story opens, we see her in the sweetness of a childhood with parents who love and adore her.  But at a very early age we learn that her mother is very ill, and in fact is dying.  What her mother leaves her with is what determines Cinderella’s future and her real riches.  Her mother asks her to promise that no matter what comes she will always “have courage and be kind”.

On the surface that could seem as if it doesn’t necessarily amount to a whole lot.  It could sound like it is nothing more than a nice platitude.  But that is not the case at all.  Cinderella makes that promise to her dying mother and then actually keeps it.  After her father also dies suddenly, she is left with a demeaning and sometimes nasty stepmother and horrible stepsisters who treat her as though she is less than a slave.  They are cruel and yet she remains kind and stays courageous.

At a time when villains are often hailed as the heroes and being bad is somehow twisted to try and make us believe it is right, when being good is seen as dull or boring, Lily James, the British actress who portrays Cinderella has a different view point.  She said regarding her role, it was important to her to prove that the fact that she was nice didn’t mean she was a pushover.  In a recent interview, she had this to say on the subject:

“I feel like sometimes, characters that are just good and nice can seem boring or uninteresting.  But with Ella (Cinderella) because her goodness is so deep, and we created this backstory for her, I had to do just as much work to ground that in something.Where does it come from and what’s the struggle to maintain that way of life?  I kind of had to think about it as much as you would with a darker character.

Sometimes I think in life as well, if you’re nice and good, people sort of count you out or don’t take you seriously, think you’re less interesting or intelligent.  I hope this film can sort of slam that out as well, and show being nice and good can be cool.”

Nice is very underrated in our opinion.  There just can’t be enough said for the rare quality of genuine niceness.  Couple that with courage and kindness and you have a force to be reckoned with.  In this case that “force” has a name…her name is Cinderella.

And did we mention that her kindness also includes forgiveness?  This version of the “child’s” fairy tale, is very full of wisdom and messages for adults as well as their younger counterparts.  What a better world, and certainly a better life we would each have if we followed Cinderella’s lead and purposed each and every day to “have courage and be kind”.  What love, what joy and certainly what abundance, what riches we would all have!

Take yourself and someone you love to the movie this weekend.  We think you’ll be very glad you did 🙂