One by one, major and minor characters do talk about Bruno, listing his various prophecies and purported crimes (“he sees your dreams and feasts on your screams”) in a conspiratorial tone. Right from its title, “We Don’t Talk About Bruno” is self-contradictory - immediately and obsessively, it does the thing it says it’s not doing.
For years he has been only an absence, a taboo, a raw nerve at the center of their world. He was a truth-teller, but people didn’t want to hear the truth.
(Because it’s Disney, literal cracks rip across the house and landscape.) In the resulting chaos, everyone begins to fixate on a forbidden subject: Bruno, the family outcast. They live in utopian harmony, employing their gifts (superhearing, superstrength, etc.) to help nearby villagers - until their perfect world starts to crack. “Encanto” tells the story of the enchanted Madrigals, an ordinary human family blessed with magical powers. Instead of elevating us above the crowd, “Bruno” drops us right down into the anxious fray. “Bruno” is tense and busy - a crowded, convulsing, percussive, down-in-the-weeds medley sung, in shifts, by society itself. And yet “Bruno” sounds nothing like “A Whole New World” or “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” or “Colors of the Wind.” It is not an uplifting aria or a yearning lament. “We Don’t Talk About Bruno,” the breakout song from the animated film “Encanto,” is the company’s biggest musical success since the old juggernauts of the 1990s. As Elsa puts it, “No right, no wrong, no rules for me - I’m free!” Disney’s signature ballads tend to be anthems of individual elevation - heroes transcending society. Aladdin and Princess Jasmine harmonize “A Whole New World” at cruising altitude, on a magic carpet, whipping past minarets. Elsa the ice princess sings “Let It Go” while climbing to the tippy-top of the tallest peak in a vast winter landscape. It’s all about altitude: High notes and high emotions are belted out at high volume, often by characters who rise, literally, high above their surroundings. It is slow and rising and inspirational - a bubble designed to lift us up, octave by octave, to a better place. We all know, deep in the marrow of our animated American bones, what a Disney megahit sounds like.
Illustration by Río Delcan La Rocca and Pablo Delcan
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