A detail makes Disney's Encanto movie to save the magic within her home and family, she learned that her uncle Bruno, who everyone believed had left years before, had simply hidden within the house's walls. Being so close to those he loved, yet still so far away in a self-imposed exile, Bruno's story is undoubtedly the saddest out of the of the Madrigal family.
Yet, plenty of others carry their own struggles, too. Mirabel learned the secrets her siblings kept buried while battling her own insecurities as the only Madrigal without a special gift. Learning about Bruno helped put their problems in perspective because as bad as things got for them, they still had a place to sit at the table every day. But Encanto's writer and director, Jared Bush, shared a detail that makes Bruno's story even more tragic.
Jared Bush revealed that Mirabel is 15-years-old in Encanto, which means that Bruno had been in hiding for 10 years. The Madrigal children receive their powers at the age of five, and Bruno left soon after Mirabel's failed celebration, when she did not receive any special ability herself. Learning her age makes the twist that Bruno did not actually abandon his family, but had remained hidden within the magical house, even sadder. For a decade, he sat silently with his own makeshift place setting on the other side of the wall from the dinner table, wishing he was involved.
As the black sheep of the family, Encanto's Bruno already had the saddest backstory of any of the Madrigals. His power did not elevate the family or help the community the way everyone else's did, and when he did a truly selfless act to try to protect his niece, he was instead blacklisted from those he loved. Even Bruno's room, with its crumbling rock faces and piles of sand, was so much more hostile and unwelcoming than the others'.
Encanto does not examine timelines too closely, even if its ing is the greatest influence on the characters' beliefs. For instance, the older she became, the further away the grandmother Alma moved from her original goal of building a family who was, above all else, happy. The effects of time are the clearest when considering Bruno, because as heartbreaking as it is to contemplate how painful an entire decade spent in isolation would be, it also clearly worsened the other Madrigals' opinions of him. The youngest family in Disney's Encanto didn't even know who Bruno was. No one was ever allowed to say his name anymore, thinking he abandoned them forever, and when people sang about what they knew of Bruno to Mirabel, they described something closer to a monster than a person: "when he sees your dreams, he feasts on your screams."
Such a line only further dehumanized a character who has already been diminished because of his absence. And 10 years is a long time to be away. Learning Mirabel's age in Encanto reveals that Bruno has been missing from the Madrigal family for a decade, making the reality of his exile even more heartbreaking. As Bruno had been fighting to maintain the smallest connection to his family, they had been banned from even saying his name, slowly twisting the truth about him over time. Perhaps the greatest miracle of Disney's Encanto movie is that Bruno never grew bitter during his long years spent alone.
