‘A cure for all things stressful’: why Stardust is my favorite movie | Claire Danes

For mid-1990s, our Sunday nights followed a certain tradition. My two younger siblings and I would sit on the couch, ignoring the fact that school was the next day, and put on our battered DVD copy of Stardust.

The first time we watched it was lost to history, but the results are not. Over time, it has become something of a cure-all, treating everything from a bad day at work to an increase in seniority.

Why does it work? Maybe because it’s unashamedly cheesy. Stardust is adapted from Neil Gaiman’s novel, but for my money, the film is the more entertaining version. For those who don’t know (probably most people), it tells the story of Tristan Thorn (before Daredevil Charlie Cox), a boy who lives in the kind of England only Americans can dream of: that is, hopelessly twee and quaint.

Desperate to prove himself, he embarks on a trip to the magical world to retrieve a fallen star, but things go awry when it turns out that the star is not an inanimate object. It’s a character named Yvaine (a post-Romeo+Juliet Claire Danes), and there are three witches trying to find her and eat her heart.

Experience a great romance (complete with great quotes) as the two bounce around the fictional world of Stormhold, before falling in love.

Stardust didn’t really make waves when it came out in 2007, except in my family. Our house was very old. We were raised with Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings; magic was, for a long time, the air we breathed.

That said, those who turn up their noses at all traditional fantasy are missing a trick. Spiritually, this feels like a successor to 1987’s The Princess Bride – although, luckily, Claire Danes’ character has been given more to do than Buttercup.

His shy nature (complete with the ability to burn people through starlight) was a delight to my fear-mongers among myself, while Michelle Pfeiffer He chews the place with pleasure as the leading witch, Lamia, that goes beyond the horrors and into the real camp.

To be honest, the whole thing is an exercise in white camp, and a fair amount (some would say unnecessary) of world-building. Over time, we meet magical shelters, falling stars that become people, pirates that roam harvesting lightning from sky ships and other sly jokes that show that there is a lot of history that did not come out of the writer’s room. Where did Babylonian candles come from? As with most things, we will never know.

Watching it as a kid, it was pretty amazing in my mind – and I’m not talking about the pre-cut recordings, which went over my head as a kid, but these days it sounds like a who’s who of the big names.

Claire Danes! Rupert Everett, playing a ghost! Mark Strong, Michelle Pfeiffer, Sienna Miller, Ian McKellen … the list goes on. And that’s without even mentioning it Robert De Niro as a gangster who is said to be dangerous and who likes to wear tutus – which made us cry and laugh like children. Or Henry Cavill, who has a small role as Tristan Humphrey’s rival.

Does it represent a reboot? As with most things, some things are very old. The modern feminist in me is a bit conflicted with the idea of ​​Charlie Cox’s Tristan saving Yvaine in the final scene of the film – or that Michelle Pfeiffer is looking at witches and evil because she’s afraid of getting old.

It goes without saying, but the whole movie is scary – something that didn’t come from the book.

But that’s part of its charm. I went back and read Gaiman’s book for the first time after university. I remember not enjoying it: the story, although similar, seemed to lack the humor, or the uneasiness that made the film so enjoyable.

Where Gaiman’s voice comes across as dry and unhinged, Stardust the film is not. It’s open and warm, a story where the good guys win and the bad guys finally get what’s coming to them.

In a world that is so complicated and dangerous, how comforting it is to know that Stardust is always waiting to be immersed: like a warm bath, it is the solution to all problems.