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| French poster artwork for the musical fantasy film Into The Woods. |
Musical Morals by Linh
Into The Woods from Walt Disney Studios is a film adaptation of the stage musical and is fairly faithful to its original source. The film underwent numerous changes to comply with Disney’s family-friendly policy, yet the alterations make very little difference to the overall tone, structure and narrative of the characterisations, story or plot. Most fans of the stage musical may be forgiving and appreciate that the changes were made for cinematic and creative reasons with most of the material faithfully adapted to the screen. The stage musical’s playwright and librettist James Lapine wrote the screenplay for the film adaptation so the core elements of Into The Woods are retained.
The film is a mix of several fairy tales that include Rapunzel, Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood, where the main characters of the different fairy tales meet and interact with each other in the dark and foreboding woods. The film’s narrative is a bit complex as plenty of action takes place almost simultaneously between different characters while in different parts of the woods, with the plot of the different fairy tales interwoven and cleverly blended with songs and music. There are plot twists where many of the fairy tale characters do not end up living "happily ever after". As a way to make it easier for audiences to follow the story, a narrator intermittently guides the viewer throughout the film. The voice-over narrator is the Baker in the film, whereas the stage musical had a male narrator, whom the other characters sacrifice to the Giant instead of sacrificing Jack. This alteration may be due to Disney Studios reducing the number of deaths in the film as well as giving the Baker a way to foreshadow the events.
The film depicts most of the morals, ethics and values from the fairy tales yet these life lessons are often over-shadowed by the cinematic aesthetics of the film such as the scenery or the costumes and props. The music and lyrics of the songs assist in depicting the characters’ moral dilemmas as some characters reflect on their decisions or actions. Most importantly, Into The Woods depicts the consequences of the characters’ decisions and actions in the second act, and some of the characters receive their comeuppance (often death) as punishment. Besides moral and ethical issues and consequences, the film also attracts discussions such as Freudian symbols and feminist commentary.
The film begins with the Baker’s voiceover narration providing the exposition with the word’s “Once upon a time…” as the characters voice their wishes in song, which acts as the film’s introduction to the characters and their situations. Cinderella (Anna Kendrick) wishes to attend the King’s festival, Jack (Daniel Huttlestone) wishes his cow named Milky-White (Tug) would give milk, Jack’s mother (Tracey Ullman) wishes for wealth and a better standard of living, Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford) wishes for bread and biscuits to give to her grandma (Annette Crosbie), and the Baker (James Corden) and his wife (Emily Blunt) wish for a child.
As Jack’s mother sends him off to market to sell Milky-White, Cinderella is scrambling about as fast as she could to get her step-sisters Florinda (Tammy Blanchard) and Lucinda (Lucy Punch) ready for the King’s festival while they and her step-mother (Christine Baranski) tease her about wanting to also attend the festival. Meanwhile, Red Riding Hood is at the bakery getting some bread for her grandma and she steals some biscuits. The Baker catches her stealing but his wife lets Red Riding Hood have them for free and even gives Red Riding Hood more biscuits and sweets.
After Red Riding Hood leaves, the Baker’s neighbour, who is an ugly old woman called The Witch (Meryl Streep), enters the bakery in a sudden blast of wind. The Witch explains that she has placed a curse on the Baker’s lineage so he will never have children due to his father’s (Simon Russell Beale) theft of her magic beans. When the witch’s mother discovered the beans missing, she placed a curse on her daughter, turning her into an ugly and old woman. The Witch also said she took the Baker’s father’s newborn baby girl, whom is later revealed to be Rapunzel (Mackenzie Mauzy).
The Witch needs the Baker and his wife to enter the woods and bring her four ingredients for a magic potion to reverse her curse, and in return she will lift the curse she placed on the Baker so he and his wife can have a child. The four ingredients are a cow as white as milk, a cape as red as blood, hair as yellow as corn and the slipper as pure as gold. The Baker and his wife need to have all four ingredients before midnight in three days when there will be a blue moon. The Baker insists on going alone despite his wife’s plea that they go together. The Baker discovers several beans in his father’s old jacket and does not realise they are the stolen magic beans from The Witch’s garden.
All the characters enter the woods; The Baker goes in search for the four ingredients and his wife joins him sometime later, Red Riding Hood goes to visit her grandma, Jack takes Milky-White to sell at the market, Cinderella goes to her mother’s grave for guidance while her step-mother and step-sisters go to the festival. From this point, each of the characters not only go into the woods but they also enter the plots of their original fairy tale. All the four ingredients needed to reverse The Witch’s curse form the link that brings together all the characters as they deal with the moral consequences of their actions. The magic beans appear to be the catalyst that sparked the vengeful actions of The Witch in response to the Baker’s father’s theft.
The stellar cast sing competently throughout the film conveying humour, sadness or jubilance and the performances are wonderful without being excessively melodramatic. Meryl Streep portrays a witch for the first time in her film career and excels in the role as her character displays different forms of nastiness to the Baker’s father and to Rapunzel. The Witch exacts revenge on the Baker’s father and then takes away his newborn daughter, thus breaking up a family and denying the girl of a father or a male role model. The Witch also appears to be nurturing and caring towards Rapunzel, yet she is emotionally abusing Rapunzel in being overprotective and controlling by isolating the girl from all outside contacts such as the prince, her community and other social circles. Abusers assert their dominance over other people by cutting off all support networks to make people vulnerable and reliant on them.
Anna Kendrick portrays Cinderella with gentle and whimsical expressions of kindness and consideration, that makes her the most respectable and admirable character, who is also the most morally strong and virtuous. Cinderella’s step-mother and step-sisters often tease and physically abuse her yet Cinderella remains kind and thoughtful instead of being vengeful. Cinderella is the character that would infuriate feminists the least due to her decision of waiting to be ‘found’ not ‘rescued’ by a prince. This puts Cinderella in control as she makes the prince come to her and remains hopeful and optimistic that he will be worth the wait. Furthermore, Cinderella is only interested in love and not the prince's wealth or status, and similarly, her prince still loves her when he 'finds' her wearing a peasant dress with a bit of dirt on her face.
Emily Blunt performs and sings beautifully as the Baker’s Wife and her seven-month baby bump is well disguised under her costume. Blunt’s character is defined by her name and role, and being a baker’s wife without a proverbial ‘bun in the oven’ makes her unhappy. This character will enrage some feminists who claim a woman should not be defined by her ovaries or fertility. However, the Baker’s Wife commits adultery and the consequences may seem accidental but she died feeling regret and guilt for succumbing to temptation. This aspect will annoy feminists as the married woman who commits adultery will be punished yet the married man, in this case Cinderella’s Prince, who does the same will escape any consequences.
Although the film is a combination of different fairy tales, the themes are often the same and the characters find themselves in similar situations and making the same decisions or taking the same actions. Theft is a common immoral act in the film, with the Baker’s father stealing The Witch’s magic beans, Red Riding Hood steals some of the Baker’s bread and biscuits, the Baker’s Wife steals Rapunzel’s hair and Jack steals numerous objects from the Giant, including golden coins, a hen that lays golden eggs and a golden harp. The consequences for the actions of each of the characters vary and the reasons for stealing may not justify the actions, particularly as the characters appeared to be acting on greed rather than need at the time they committed theft.
Murder is also committed by some of the characters including the Baker who murders the Wolf to save Red Riding Hood and her grandma, Jack murders the Giant by chopping down the beanstalk, and the Steward of Cinderella’s prince kills Jack’s mother by violently shoving her to the ground where she hits her head on a log and dies. In the film adaptation, the murder scenes are toned down yet in the stage version, the violence is quite extreme. None of the characters seem to be accepting responsibility for the murders they committed, and there is a sense that their actions were justified. For example, the Baker needed to kill the Wolf so he can get Red Riding Hood’s red cape which is one of the four ingredients, Jack needed to kill the Giant to prevent total destruction of his village and further deaths, and the Steward needed to silence Jack’s hysterical mother so her ravings won’t lure the Giant’s wife towards them.
Revenge is another moral issue where often it is not justified and is seen as self-serving in the film. The Witch’s mother placed a curse on her for failing to protect the magic beans and The Witch in turn placed a curse on the Baker’s father. The Giant’s wife came down from the second beanstalk to seek revenge for her dead husband. The fairy tales implicitly show that revenge of any form or for any reason is not often justified as it is not a way to seek justice but will only cause more harm and hurt to others.
In regards to Freudian symbols, all the four ingredients needed to create the potion to reverse the curse on The Witch and the Baker are feminine symbols which may not represent the act of intercourse but are related to sexuality. The ingredients are needed to enable the Baker’s Wife to have a child and for The Witch to regain her youth and beauty. In the Freudian notion, these aspects (fertility, youth and beauty) are often linked to desires and images of femininity and womanhood. The red colour of the cape is supposed to represent menstrual blood. The cow as white as milk is a female animal that provides natural nourishment for its offspring, in a similar way a woman provides breast milk for her baby. The hair as yellow as corn is a Westernised symbol of youth and beauty in women who have blonde hair. The golden slipper has a contradictory symbol of authority and power or humility and servitude, perhaps as it belongs to Cinderella who challenges some conservative ideas of femininity.
Into The Woods is a beautifully filmed and scored adaptation of the stage musical and the performances are consistently entertaining. The film’s colour palette of earthy hues for many of the characters’ costumes complements the natural colours of the woods. The lighting effects are impressive as it cast shadows of darkness and moments of light within the woods to depict the characters’ uncertainty or enlightenment of their experiences. The lighting effects also portray the woods as a character providing the dual purpose of danger and delight for the human characters; perhaps as a metaphor that life is full of more than good or bad such as the huge grey area of the unknown which is yet to be explored or understood.
Into The Woods consists of fairy tales that are familiar to many children yet there are some horrible scenes kept in the film to maintain the fairy tales’ authenticity, such as Cinderella’s step-mother cutting off the elder step-sister’s toes and then cuts off her other daughter’s heel so the golden shoe can fit their feet. Blood is shown resulting from these desperate acts. Adults may be able to explain the fairy tale’s morals and values to children, albeit in vague ways due to the ambivalence of the moral and ethical decisions the characters face in the fairy tales.
Director: Rob Marshall
Writer: James Lapine (screenplay, stage musical)
Cast: Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt, James Corden, Anna Kendrick, Daniel Huttlestone, Lilla Crawford, Tracey Ullman, Christine Baranski, Lucy Punch, Tammy Blanchard, Johnny Depp, Chris Pine, Billy Magnussen, Mackenzie Mauzy, Richard Glover, Frances de la Tour, Joanna Riding, Annette Crosbie, Simon Russell Beale, Tug the cow
Producers: Rob Marshall, Marc Platt, John DeLuca, Callum McDougall, Michael Zimmer, Angus More Gordon
Film Editor: Wyatt Smith
Cinematographer: Dion Beebe
Original Music Composers: Stephen Sondheim (music and lyrics), David Krane (score adaptation)
Costume Designer: Colleen Atwood
Production: Dennis Gassner (production design), Anna Pinnock (set decorator), Mary Mackenzie, Ben Collins, Chris Lowe, Andrew Bennett (art direction)
Running Time: 2 hours and 10 minutes
