Disney’s, ‘Into the Woods’: Fables Still Have the Power to Teach
Stephen Sondheim’s woods are scary. Wander off the well-trodden path, and you can be thrown into a Freudian wilderness filled with bodice-ripping terror. Sondheim may assure us that “No One Is Alone,” but we also learn that togetherness doesn’t guarantee safety from pain.
Above, left: Lilla Crawford as Little Red Riding Hood in “Into the Woods.” All photo credits: Walt Disney Studios.
Composer Sondheim and lyricist/librettist James Lapine brought Into the Woods to Broadway in 1987. A conglomeration of nineteenth century fairy tales by the Grimm brothers, the musical has deeper roots in Bruno Bettelheim, notably in his Freudian view that “The Uses of Enchantment” could help children cope with fear, violence, abandonment, and death. xxxxxx
In the stage version, Act I showcases the travails of Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, giant-killer Jack, and a childless baker and his wife; featured players include a witch, a wolf, two princes, and a couple of giants. Bad things happen to everyone, but the first act closes with happy endings all round. Act II then smashes all that happy stuff to bits, leaving trails of carnage, death, unrequited passion, and destruction. But some characters manage to survive, and are apparently stronger because of their newly-acquired self-knowledge.
Frank Rich reviewed the stage production in The New York Times (November 6, 1987), and noted how the Woods characters experienced the same painful, existential journeys found in such other Sondheim musicals as Follies, Sunday in the Park with George, and A Little Night Music. Rich saluted the show’s “brilliant” conception and its “incomparably clever lyrics,” but criticized the convoluted plot as having a “strangulating effect” on the musical as a whole.
Making a movie of Into the Woods remained an unfilled wish for years. Ultimately and surprisingly, it would be Disney Studios that made it happen. Despite worries over Sondheim and Lapine being Disneyfied, the screen version turns out to be a great success. The characters are delightful, and the whole fairy tale mashup cleaner and less self-indulgent.
Meryl Streep steals the movie: she is a HOOT as the Witch, and relishes every iota of her wickedness. Costume genius Colleen Atwood has enveloped Streep in overflowing witchiness, but it is Streep’s phenomenal power that captures the screen.
Left: Emily Blunt as the Baker’s Wife and James Corden as the Husband.
The plot is set in motion when Streep offers to remove the curse of childlessness she cast on the baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) when, years ago, his father had stolen “magic beans” from her vegetable garden. Streep’s over-the-top rap rendition extolling the vegetables in her garden will be tagged forevermore as a landmark performance: “Rooting though my rutabaga,/Raiding my arugula and ripping up the rampion!” You can almost hear Streep trilling “woo-hoo!!!”
The Witch will remove the curse if the baker and his wife bring her four specific things in the next three days: a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, a slipper as pure as gold, and hair as yellow as corn.
Right: Daniel Huttlestone as Jack and Tracy Ullman as his mother.
The cow turns up when the boy Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) takes Milky White into the woods: the cow has failed to produce any milk, and Jack’s mother has ordered him to sell the creature in town.
The cape appears on the scene when Little Red Riding Hood heads through the woods on her way to her Granny’s. Johnny Depp’s brief appearance as the Wolf is wonderfully sinister but also campy: instead of the anatomically-correct costume of the Broadway wolf, Depp convinced the costume designer that he should wear a Zoot Suit inspired by the Big Bad Wolf in the classic 1943 Tex Avery cartoon. Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) is here not a child but a teen ager who knows how to con: she sweet-talks the baker’s wife out of a basket of pastries for her sick grandmother, then gobbles them all before reaching granny’s door.
The golden slipper—not glass!—next appears when Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) succeeds in attracting the Prince’s attention at the three-day-long King’s Ball. She runs from the Prince after two nights of the Ball, but on the third and final night, her slippers get stuck in the tar the Prince had poured on the Castle steps. She leaves one as she runs away.
Left: Anna Kendrick looks less than thrilled to be polishing silver, as Cinderella.
Meanwhile, “hair as yellow as corn” materializes with the story of Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy). The Witch stole Rapunzel from the baker’s father and imprisoned her in a tower, raising her as her own daughter. Now a young woman, Rapunzel uses her long golden locks to snag yet another Prince wandering in the woods. One of the film’s highlights has the two very handsome princes, Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen, sing “Agony”—a preening paean to their abiding cluelessness. Pine is the Prince who marries Cinderella but then turns out to be a cad; he explains, “I was raised to be charming, not sincere.” When both royals rip their shirts to show off their hunky chests as they sing, it is hysterically funny and perfect.
Right: Lucy Punch and Tammy Blanchard as Cinderella’s evil stepsisters and Christine Baranski as her evil stepmother.
Christine Baranski is delicious as Cinderella’s Wicked Stepmother, and Tracey Ullman is fine as Jack the Giant-killer’s rather nasty mother. But it is Streep who retains full control onscreen. As the movie churns to a seemingly cataclysmic finish, an angered giant barrels down Jack’s beanstalk (grown from one of the Witch’s stolen magic beans) and tries to stomp out everything in the world below. But before all is totally lost, the spotlight returns to La Streep.
The baker and his wife manage to give the Witch the four artifacts she wanted, and she releases them—instantly!–from their childless curse. Drinking some of Milky White’s milk, she then loses both her witchly powers and her terrifying guise, and is transformed into the lovely woman she once had been. She begs Rapunzel not to go off with her handsome prince, but to “Stay With Me.” Then she sings the all-stops-out “Last Midnight,” exclaiming “I’m not good, I’m not nice, I’m just right. I’m the witch. You’re the world.”
Left: Johnny Depp as the Wolf.
The movie musical’s final song, “Children Will Listen,” resonates with a moral lesson as relevant today as it has always been:
“Careful the things you say,/Children will listen./ Careful the things you do,/Children will see./ And learn.”
By Amy Henderson, Contributing Writer
Into the Woods
Directed by Rob Marshall; written by James Lapine, music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim. Released by Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures. Running time 2 hours, 4 minutes.