Pictures of the Movie Into the Woods
Movie Review
The Quest for Storybook Endings in a Scary but Magical World
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transcript
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Anatomy of a Scene | 'Into the Woods'
The director Rob Marshall discusses a sequence from "Into the Woods" where the song "No One Is Alone" is performed.
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- Into the Woods
- NYT Critic's Pick
- Directed by Rob Marshall
- Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Musical
- PG
- 2h 5m
"Into the Woods," the splendid Disney screen adaptation of the Stephen Sondheim-James Lapine musical, infuses new vitality into the tired marketing concept of entertainment for "children of all ages." That usually translates to mean only children and their doting parents. But with "Into the Woods," you grow up with the characters, young and old, in a lifelong process of self-discovery.
Directed by Rob Marshall ("Chicago," "Nine"), this witty and touching mash-up of several Grimm fairy tales viewed through a post-Freudian prism reimagines Cinderella (Anna Kendrick), Little Red Riding Hood (Lilla Crawford), Rapunzel (MacKenzie Mauzy), Jack (of "Jack and the Beanstalk," played by Daniel Huttlestone) and other fairy tale figures as complex, self-aware human beings in transition. Mr. Lapine's screenplay follows them to "happily ever after," then leaps ahead into territory that turns out to be the scary real world. Here, children weaned on fairy tales must finally abandon magical thinking.
It is a world ravaged by catastrophe. The villain is an angry female giant (Frances de la Tour), who stomps through the land, wreaking random death and destruction. Lost and with no direction home, the survivors turn on one another, but quickly realize they have no choice but to stick together as they fend for themselves.
Mr. Sondheim's great song "No One Is Alone" is a double-edged lullaby. It acknowledges that everyone is ultimately alone, although the shared understanding of that isolation makes life bearable.
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Movie Review: 'Into the Woods'
The Times critic Stephen Holden reviews "Into the Woods."
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The movie shows remarkably few signs of the sweetening and dumbing down that might have been expected, given the Disney factory's philosophy of gratifying wishes but adding just enough darkness to make the light seem brighter. I suspect that the success of "Frozen" may have persuaded the company to modify its traditional formulas to allow more realism and ambiguity, which is all to the good.
The movie gives us two princes, one for Cinderella, the other for Rapunzel. These preening dandies, played by Chris Pine and Billy Magnussen, share the funniest song, "Agony," in which they bellyache about the pain of the yet-unconsummated romantic chase as they cavort around a waterfall. Mr. Pine's Prince is a direct forerunner of the caddish royal dreamboat in "Frozen," and it's reasonable to speculate that "Into the Woods" influenced his creation.
Cinderella, beneath her facade of meek, abused scullery maid, is a schemer who strategically deposits a shoe on the palace steps while fleeing at midnight. With her avid glare and jack-o'-lantern smile, Ms. Kendrick is not a classic Cinderella, but a sly, modern go-getter plotting her future.
A key player in the drama is a witch (Meryl Streep), who kidnapped Rapunzel, the baby sister of the baker who lives next door, and becomes a fiercely protective mother figure. The chubby, spunky Little Red Riding Hood steals pies from the bakery. There is a complicated history connecting these and other characters who wind up in the nearby forest, pursuing outlandish quests.
Rapunzel and the witch are not the movie's only parent and child in conflict. Jack and his strict mother (Tracey Ullman), irate that he traded a cow for some magic beans, are continually at odds. The characters closest to their fairy tale origins are Cinderella's stepmother (Christine Baranski) and stepsisters, Florinda (Tammy Blanchard) and Lucinda (Lucy Punch). With the exception of the giant and a wolf (a sensational Johnny Depp) who stalks and devours Little Red Riding Hood, these mean girls and their avaricious mom are the only genuine baddies.
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Everyone else is shaded somewhere between good and evil. Even Ms. Streep's vindictive hag is not entirely wicked. When a curse is lifted, and her beauty is restored, she is a dead ringer for Miranda Priestly, Ms. Streep's regal fashion maven in "The Devil Wears Prada." Ms. Streep's warm performance gives the witch, even at her most fearsome, a twinkle of good humor that draws you to her. And her climactic meltdown, "Last Midnight," is a vocal and dramatic tour de force.
"Into the Woods" has just enough carefully chosen computer-generated effects to give it the feel of a semi-animated film without going overboard. In Dennis Gassner's production design, the forest in which most of the action takes place is suffused with magic. The witch materializes and vanishes in leafy whirlwinds. The gnarly trees almost have personalities of their own. The shafts of sunlight filtering through the forest lend it a glow of heavenly illumination.
Mr. Sondheim and Mr. Lapine, the wizards pulling the strings, are behind-the-scenes Prosperos conjuring magic. Even after the story darkens, Mr. Lapine's book sustains enough humor to prevent the tone from sounding pedantic. Late in the movie, Cinderella's vain, clueless prince apologizes for his dalliance (with the Baker's Wife) by explaining, "I was raised to be charming, not sincere."
The Sondheim lyrics do much of the storytelling, with their dense wordplay and ingenious internal rhymes that verge on a Broadway equivalent of rap. The title number, a pastiche of the early-20th-century song "Teddy Bears' Picnic," establishes the innocent, carefree springboard from which everything else leaps. The one major song missing, the heartbreaking "No More," alas, is heard only briefly as an instrumental. Gloriously orchestrated by Jonathan Tunick, the gorgeous music has never sounded more eloquent.
And "Children Will Listen" distills what might be called the gospel according to Sondheim:
Careful the things you say,
Children will listen.
Careful the things you do,
Children will see.
And learn.
We are listening.
"Into the Woods" is rated PG (Parental guidance suggested). Fantasy action and peril, and some suggestive material.
Pictures of the Movie Into the Woods
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/25/movies/into-the-woods-disneys-take-on-the-sondheim-lapine-classic.html