The opening minutes of Into
the Woods brought it all back with a bounce and a tap, and I remembered
classroom periods of 4 part harmony in front of the piano, and all the clever
ways you can evoke the personality of a character with melody. I’m mildly
delighted-- and it’s not my movie, really. My friend chose it. She knows
movies.
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| James Corden and Emily Blunt as The Baker and wife. |
A childless
Baker and his wife are visited by their neighbor, the Witch (Meryl Streep) who
offers to remove a curse over them if they would seek out certain items for
her. The couple venture into the woods to find these items when they meet characters
from children’s tales. I note that Chip Zien was cast as The Baker in the 1987
Broadway premiere, and in the 2012 revival at The Public Theatre, he doubled
for two different roles. A year before he played The Baker, Zien voiced the resident
duck of Marvel Comics in a live action film.
I found my
thrill mostly in the vocal deliveries of the cast— in particular, how Streep
can stretch a syllable with a breathy note of arrogance and it’s flawless. James
Corden is a humble and very likable Baker. Johnny Depp becomes the wolf
stalking Red Riding Hood with the right amount of sleaze in his cadence. He is “creepy”
(I’m using my friend’s word). Depp’s scene is the second most memorable, with
perfect paws and hat, movement and he closes it out with a bay at the moon.
“Agony” is a song by the two princes pining for Cinderella and Rapunzel. It’s
full of the hardships of the male mystique and it gets more than an embarrassed
chuckle. But it’s the appearance of the giantess that drew pause. The film
captures a jowled, menacing face peering through tree branches, from an imperfect
angle of view. Her face is obscured by trees; the sky a gloomy light grey. It’s
a nightmarish kind of beautiful shot. She’s played by Frances De La Tour who I
recognized immediately as the cannibal housewife in the film, The Book of Eli.
Into
the Woods takes the
fairy tales of Little Red Riding Hood, Cinderella, Rapunzel and Jack & the
Beanstalk and unifies them into a cool, cinematic universe. If you’re a
hardcore fan of fantasy and musical theater then you’ll love it. The cast is
stellar and the story idea is a lot of fun. But I felt it was too long. It’s
dark—a mother hits her head on the ground and dies, the witch is not altogether
a villain. There is a junior version of this musical that played in the schools
sans the second act, and Disney made family-oriented changes with composer Stephen
Sondheim’s approval.
It’s not
“puritanical” to point out that the fates of these characters are cynical as if
for its own sake—like the infidelity of Cinderella’s prince. It feels like a
wink and a snicker. I could only appreciate the thematic gems after reading the
observations of critics from past theater productions, but I wasn’t convinced
that Sondheim or Disney cared very much about that. At best, each of the
characters discovered that their lives would not be as idyllic as they had
hoped. It’s common in the theater for the writer to cast off the theme of his
play for the audience to figure out, rather than having a bold conviction. It
doesn’t work all the time. Anyway, no matter how compelling the life view of a
witch is, you don’t put your trust in one.
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| Johnny Depp as the Wolf and Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood |
Last May, a writer named Max
Landis posted a random Twitter comment asserting that the film rights to Spider-Man
had reverted to Marvel Studios. People blew it off. But then rumors picked up
again, and by the end of the year, the Sony Pictures hack released confidential
data into the public domain. There was confirmation that Spider-Man was in
talks to appear in Captain America: Civil
War.
