My previous entry was designed to identify shortcomings posed in adapting Into The Woods from a live show, be it amateur effort or Broadway bonanza, to screen. I now confess that, in my haste to evaluate the gaps between these not-entirely-dissimilar forms, I may have issued a myopic appraisal. A repeat screening of Woods: The Movie is likely in the cards for fans of its varied theatrical incarnations --- as ours can be a biased community, harboring preexisting notions of what it is we expect to see preserved. A film version inevitably guts various "essentials" -- elements from the musical's book that may never be bottled by Hollywood as long as commercial appeal trumps awkward, uncomfortable absurdity, insurgency, out-of-the-box freedoms, dark-as-night implications. Even though the original author-songwriter team of ITW was also responsible for the filming script, it occurs to me that perhaps a more disruptive, innovative voice would have better captured its sense of daring and surprise -- a maverick in the vein of Charlie Kaufman or a onetime-undisiplined Terry Gilliam (who in his own right has become too comfortable, resting, like James Lapine here, on his laurels). And yet, whatever it was that seems to have been lost in translation, the result is in the end a piece of work that deserves to be shown due consideration independent of any previous version one's mind employs as comparative touchstone. That is why seeing it for a second time may be necessary for some of us who take longer to flush entrenched impressions, to clean the palate of a lingering flavor considered especially gratifying, even consummate. Indeed, when we narrow our focus to what something isn't, it becomes difficult to fairly evaluate and appreciate the niceties offered in what it is.
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| Illustration for "Goblin Market," Arthur Rackham |
IN MY CRITIQUE OF THE ROB MARSHALL-HELMED BLOCKBUSTER, I FAILED TO SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES. THE SAME CAN BE SAID FOR MY LIFE, IN GENERAL.
I HAVE BEEN LACKING PERSPECTIVE, HONING-IN ON A LITANY OF DISASTERS (A VERITABLE HAIL STORM OF BARBED MISFORTUNES) ALL THE WHILE FORGETTING TO ACKNOWLEDGE WHERE I HAVE BEEN BLESSED, EVEN SPOILED.
ALL TOO OFTEN, I LOOK A GIFT HORSE IN THE MOUTH, JUDGING LARGE INTRUSIONS AS SOMETHING TO BE FEARED AND INTIMIDATED BY, NOT RESPECTED, NOR EMBRACED...
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| Illustration: "She Kissed the Bear on the Nose," John Bauer (Sometimes we stand too close to our obstacles to properly assess their kind and quality.) |
I have omitted discussion of it on these pages, but my maternal grandmother passed-away the Sunday leading into Thanksgiving, throwning a pall upon the holidays (a difficult period in their own right). My father will learn in one week the results of a PET scan measuring the state of his lymphoma, and when he allows them to, his doctor's reports have the power to persuade his moods up or down, as the moon rules the tides. It is easy for me to forget that, yes, he has been tussling with cancer, but it is a mild form, with chemo rounds widely intermittent, side effects remarkably few. On my mother's recent birthday he was so sick with worry about his approaching test that he had her drive him home from her own party, only to then refuse supper upon arrival. Such obstinacy is a recurring trait with our family, and I am certainly not immune (what with my stubborn, near-crippling adherence to familiar OCD/ED behavioral patterns). But it is hard not to suspect voodoo at play when you witness a death, followed shortly thereafter by the break-down of more trivial things: the kitchen floor tiles cracking, the furnace requiring professional care, the VCR/DVD player becoming jammed with a knotted VHS cassette, the washing machine going belly-up after a solid thirty-year run, sub-freezing air leaving your lips, hands, toes brutally blistered, with water pipes exploding and house flowers turning brown from vacillating temperatures, your usual outdoor exercise routines curtailed in kind. The reduction in walking time permitted by Maine's polar conditions then causes me to tell myself I deserve to eat less, which then devastates my body's blood sugar levels, which in turn leaves me vulnerable to weight loss/depression/off-center thinking... And we're back to the start, to the origin of my woes (or at least how I perceive them) --- the impaired logic and "hanger" of basic malnutrition. In effect, I sew my own blinker hood, trotting into a snarled path when perfectly clear ones remain on either side. It took me until last evening to again recognize life's "little miracles," as a Good Samaritan at the market randomly paid for my small lot of groceries, going so far as to additionally throw-in three avocados "because when I encountered you here a year ago you couldn't afford them." Yes, he wore the stench of tobacco like a cape, but his eyes were kind and his general impression not a far cry from a gristled Bob Balaban. It all brings to mind a quote I saw printed in the paper this Saturday, from the respectable hand of Dashiell Hammett:
"YOU'VE GOT TO LOOK ON THE BRIGHT SIDE,
EVEN IF THERE AIN'T ONE."
I could easily coast into superstitious deprecations. (After all, today is the thirteenth of the month.) But that obscures so many of the things going right, even if there is, as always, so much pain, be it globally (see: Ferguson, Paris) and at close proximity (my grandmother's absence, my father's tumors, my mother's burdens, my depleted physical/emotional/financial reserves). I know, I know... In a nation of so much privilege, many of our grievances are a matter of perspective, often self-induced.
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| Illustration for "Goblin Market," Arthur Rackham |
It's just...
(Sigh.)
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