Review of Into the Woods (2014) by Clarisesamuels — 20 Jun 2015

In December 1987, I saw Into the Woods on Broadway with Bernadette Peters. The musical had just opened the month before, and it was charming, original, and entertaining. Translating the musical and stage format to the screen expands the spatial representation to the world of reality, or pseudo-reality, given that the story is a fairy tale, and that expansion is problematic for it dilutes the concentrated power of the original format.

The most innovative aspect of the original effort was the clever intertwining of several prominent fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm. A baker (James Corden) and his young wife (Emily Blunt), who cannot conceive, live next door to a nasty, old lady (Meryl Streep), who looks exactly like a witch and turns out to be a real one—she has a vegetable garden that grows magic beans, and she cursed the couple long ago when the baker’s father stole some of the beans from her. In order to lift the curse, the couple has to provide the witch with a milky-white cow, a golden slipper, a red cape, and corn-yellow hair in three days before midnight. In the meantime, the old witch visits her adopted daughter, who has very long hair and lives in a tower. That would be Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy). The magic beans, of course, grow a giant stalk that is climbed by a young boy named Jack (Daniel Huttlestone), and the kingdom is ruled by a handsome prince (Chris Pine) who is seeking a wife and who meets a young woman named Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) at the ball. The woods of the small kingdom contain wolves and a hut occupied by a grandmother—a little girl visits granny wearing a red cape with a hood (Lilla Crawford).

As per the original story, there are dilemmas and scenarios that would have shocked the Grimm Brothers. For example, the baker’s wife has a one-night stand with Prince Charming, and that takes place after he has had his happily-ever-after wedding with Cinderella. And Cinderella is very frustrated about life with the prince because everything is too perfect. The witch is actually just an overprotective mother who can’t accept that her daughter’s childhood has ended. They all come together in the last act to fight a common foe, which is a giant who has descended by way of the stalk and wants revenge upon little Jack for stealing from her and accidentally killing her husband.

Live theatre creates its own microcosmic reality; thus, the stage version is not as jarring when the characters are constantly breaking out into song. Generally speaking, in a musical stage production the singing is well integrated. On film, the integration of the singing has to be more nuanced, and it is very difficult to achieve just the right timing in a film setting that appears to occupy a realistic landscape. There is a constant air of “I feel a song coming on...” that can weary the audience.

Streep makes for a good witch, albeit maybe a bit too exaggerated if one is to believe she is also a loving mother. Blunt has the strongest role as the baker’s wife. All the actors seem to be desperately seeking their character, including Anna Kendrick as a petite, brunette Cinderella, a description which doesn’t quite fit the profile. (Blunt’s plaintive line, “I’m in the wrong story,” strikes a chord in more ways than one.) The two princes, Cinderella’s prince and Rapunzel’s prince (Billy Magnussen) are as handsome as princes can be, but they are overly fickle and shallow. If the reasons behind their fickleness are complex, that complexity is never explored. And the film is overly long.

Although the visual representation of the fairy-tale kingdom is brilliantly magical, if not positively supernatural, it is not clear that this is the fairy-tale version that the children want to see. The Broadway version was more openly cynical, and it was also strictly for grown-ups.