Into the Woods

           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.

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. 

Johnny Depp as the Wolf and Lilla Crawford as Red Riding Hood