Rob Marshall's 'Into the Woods'

Surprisingly, it’s not what a professional film critic expected either. The Associated Press’s reviewer wrote that when the film reaches an “appropriate conclusion, you glance at your watch and realize that there's still nearly half a film left. Things get infinitely weirder and darker and end up nullifying most of what was captivating in the first part. Apparently the second half is even divisive in the theater community. Some productions choose to leave it out entirely.”

Really? The only place the second half is omitted is in middle school productions. In fact, most theatergoers adore Into the Woods specifically because of its second act. It is the whole reason for the show. That scribe obviously didn’t get the point that happiness is not guaranteed in life. Sondheim asks us, why would you tell your child everything will be all right when you know that it mightn't be true?

Unsated desires

The concept is really not difficult to grasp. Characters like Cinderella, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood, and Jack (from the beanstalk) collide and intertwine in a mutual meeting ground — the woods, of course. Into the Woods shows the negative ramifications of these characters’ wishes and appetites, the consequences of what they did to get what they wanted. Even when these folks achieve some of their wishes, they still desire more, and Sondheim and coauthor James Lapine warn of the dangers of that greediness.

Almost everything that goes wrong arises from a failure of parental duty. Sondheim drew on his troubled childhood when writing the show. He told his biographer Meryle Secrest, and many others, that his father was detached and his mother regretted ever having a child.

Another theme is interconnectedness. About the song “No One Is Alone,” Sondheim said “People think the song is about being alone, but it's not. It's about how we all affect one another. In everything we do it affects someone, and we have to think about that.”

If you ignore all this and regard the second half as an intrusion into a happy story, then you are missing the essence of the experience.

Menacing beauty

As directed by Rob Marshall, the movie pictorializes a world that is beautiful but menacing. The story was always cinematic with its crisscrossing stories, and Marshall’s jump-cut editing suits it perfectly. The cast provides standout acting and singing, especially by Meryl Streep as the Witch (melding fine technique with wild abandon), Anna Kendrick as Cinderella, Chris Pine as the Prince, James Corden as the Baker, Emily Blunt as his wife, and a brief but effective turn by Johnny Depp as the Wolf. Every other part was well-cast, with not a single weak link.

When the second half begins with what seems like an earthquake, but turns out to be a terrorist (the Giant) toppling the towers, it’s hard to realize that this show was written 15 years before 9/11. Marshall devised the crash of the towers, but he took his cue from Sondheim and Lapine’s concept. The Prince then says that he’ll personally lead an investigation to determine the cause and a Sondheim song has everyone blaming everyone else for the catastrophe, lending the movie current relevance.

Paul Gemignani directed the music, as he did on Broadway in 1987, and made sure that every performer kept in tempo and on pitch, something not always achieved in movies. This ensured that all of Sondheim’s witty lyrics could be clearly heard.

On Christmas Day, I saw a theater packed with children and wondered how many of their parents, like the AP critic, were blindsided. But it didn’t matter. Their children got to learn some truths about life and the ending, with the baker starting to read a fairy tale to the surviving youngsters and the camera panning up to the sky, was uplifting.