Chapter fifty-two: Into the Woods

Hello everybody! Glad to see you back this week, and what a week it has been. For one thing, I recently passed my first anniversary of watching Mamma Mia! for the first time. That was a nice time warp, but it left me thinking that with this new year, my binge suggestions were running dry compared to last year. I've realized how comforting it is to have a film or show you know you want to watch; to be able to have control of the remote and know exactly what to watch without trying to finding your way out of a rabbit hole of channel stations, is refreshing. So I remembered over the summer when my friend told me about a Netflix show she watched that I might like called Grace and Frankie. I avoided it for the longest time but finally gave into it. My friend was right. I'm about halfway through the series, and I adore it. By now, it's been well established that she's Frankie and I'm Grace, and we're definitely buying a beach house together when we hit seventy.

But, just as I was getting attached and wondering how Jane Fonda stays that thin while I indulged in a bag of chips on my couch, news surfaced that our Capitol was rioted in sedition BY THE PRESIDENT. I could gladly go into more detail about how upsetting this is, but I have the capacity to understand what's important to say and what's not. If I didn't have that quality, my account would be permanently suspended. Plus, he'll be out of office in less than two weeks, so there's no use in getting overly worked up at this point.

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Anyway, what's important is today's movie, though it didn't start out as a movie. Into the Woods is a stage musical by Stephen Sondheim, which premiered in December of 1986 and was adapted into a movie in December of 2014. I was eleven when it hit theaters, and again, if you've followed this blog, you know there's always been a thin line that separates me from musicals, and it's a line that I often cross. This was no exception. I just think it's interesting how your interests follow you one way or another. I also learned in an interview that when Meryl turned forty, she was offered three roles as witches, and rightfully took that as a sign from Hollywood regarding their respect for women. Of course, she declined them all at the time. But by this point, she figured it was time to play one.

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Into the Woods is about a married couple (James Corden and Emily Blunt) who own a bakery and are struggling to have a child. Come to find out, the reason they are is because The Witch of the forest (Meryl) placed a curse on their family tree when the baker's father raided her garden and stole her beans for his wife, which robbed The Witch of her beauty. (The story of Rapunzel.) If they want the curse reversed, then in three days, they must bring The Witch:

1. A cow as white as milk. (Jack and the Beanstalk)

2. A cape as red as blood. (Little Red Riding Hood)

3. Hair as yellow as corn. (Rapunzel)

4. A slipper as pure as gold. (Cinderella)

(This whole first paragraph is all explained in the first 15-minute prologue song of the movie, which took me two months to memorize.)

So, that's how the five stories all combine. In the first act, the baker and his wife accomplish their task, and the curse is lifted. The Witch's beauty has also been restored, but with it, she has lost her magical powers of trickery.

In the second act after Cinderella's marriage to Prince Charming, things head south as the characters themselves finally meet each other when the giant from Jack's portion of the story runs rapidly and terrorizes the forest. When all of the characters come face-to-face, they realize that The Witch has been the one person who has caused this all to happen, making it her fault.

With everyone rallied against her, even Rapunzel whom she raised, and having no powers to stop them with, The Witch gives into her karma, expecting to be turned ugly again, but in all of her drastic spinning, she rots in the ground. In my (humble, totally non-biased towards Meryl's characters) opinion, she deserved better. But, it's in The Witch's absence that the rest of the characters receive their happy ending as scripted by their respective storylines.

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It's quite easy for me to explain the plot because these fairytale stories are as timeless as time itself, so I think it's safe to say we all know how they end. But, I can only assume that the agony of putting all of the stories together and making them fit like a puzzle was far more difficult than the stories themselves. That's what makes it so good and intriguing to me personally because I had never, not once saw the villainess connection between the stories until it was right under my nose. I think the musical gave new a life and interpretation of the stories. Art is all about interpretation and- I just- love musicals.

As always, thank you for the entertainment, Meryl.