Aubrey MaloneFairytales begin with ‘Once upon a time’ and end with ‘And they all lived happily ever after.’ Right? Wrong.
I mentioned this film last week in my preview of the January releases. I’ve now seen it and can confirm it’s going to be one of the most talked-about movies of 2015, not that it will be everyone’s cup of tea. It’s gothic for one thing and the songs, despite being very impressive (lots of clever lyrics and rat-tat-tat melodies from Steven Sondheim) are somewhat samey. And haven’t we seen Johnny Depp doing that madcap fantasy routine often enough already in all those Tim Burton films?
But it wins you over with its cheekily revisionist approach to the four fairytales it subverts – and occasionally perverts – Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and Jack and the Beanstalk.
“This is ridiculous,” a baker’s wife (played by Emily Blunt) exclaims after being kissed by Prince Charming (Chris Pine) in the eponymous woods – the word ‘wood’ is almost italicised in the movie with umpteen mentions in songs and speech: “What am I doing here? I’m in the wrong story.” Because Prince Charming should be kissing Cinders, shouldn’t he? But then, as he says himself, he’s “more charming than sincere”.
To Meryl Streep falls the daunting challenge of playing the Wicked Witch. She rises to the occasion with predictable brio, and not only with her singing. (She could give Shirley Bassey a run for her money here.) Her twistedly demonic expressions provide proof yet again, if proof were needed, that she’s cinema’s especial doyenne of the chameleon.
Blunt, meanwhile, is all bewilderment and furrowed brows. We’re more accustomed to seeing her husband (James Corden) in more offbeat roles, not to mention Channel 4 comedy shows, but he scrubs up nicely for the occasion.
Cinderella is played with a tad more conservatism by Anna Kendrick, she of the soulful eyes.
It’s a blackly comic hodge-podge with all the stops being pulled out, both verbally and visually and, of course, sonically.
The film is a feast for the eyes and ears but some of the little ‘uns might be scared by the special effects, and indeed wonder why director Rob Marshall isn’t adhering rigidly to the sacredness of their Ladybird texts. “This is a fairytale for 21st century children,” Marshall said after finishing the movie, “who live in a much more unstable and complicated world than I did”.
Will the songs of Into the Woods become classics of the future in the same way as those of the musicals I grew up with (Oklahoma, Showboat, West Side Story, etc) are of the past? Who knows? But, for the moment, this is enough to be going on with a cheerfully anarchic take on what might have happened if fictional characters of child lore intertwined.
Nicolas Roeg tried this with real people (Einstein, Joe DiMaggio, Marilyn Monroe and HUAC investigator Senator Joseph McCarthy) in his ‘what if’ filmInsignificance. Here we have a different kind of mix-and-match in a tale centring on Streep’s injunction to Blunt and Corden to present her with four items to lift a curse on her childbearing ability.
Nobody could fault Marshall’s wildly imaginative version of Sondheim’s Tony-award winning Broadway hit, but a part of me left the cinema thinking: why didn’t they let well enough alone? You might do so too.