REVIEW : INTO THE WOODS

Rob Marshall’s ambitious ensemble fantasy Into The Woods represents a bold – and darker – step forward for the Disney musical. Talking exclusively to Total Film, the director takes us through the making of a fairytale that ‘pushes the boundaries’...

I have always been a huge fan of Into The Woods on stage. I saw the original production in 1987 and I loved it and everything it said. I particularly loved that it explored so many different themes: the consequences of wishes, the complexity of the parent-child relationship, greed, ambition and, I guess, unconditional love and the power of human spirit. It really does deal with so many different things in addition to being incredibly funny and joyous.

The moment that I realised it might be important to make the film now came in 2011 when I was watching the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks and President Obama addressed the families of the victims. He said to them, “No one is alone. I want you to know that no one is alone, you are not alone,” and it reminded me of the song ‘No One Is Alone’ from Into The Woods, which is a beautiful, poignant song. And I thought that it is so important now to understand how you get through a difficult time, because the children of today live in a much more unstable world than I did growing up. Into The Woods is a fairytale for today. It’s a fairytale for the post 9-11 generation, and it just felt like this was the time to do it. So that spurred me on to start the whole process of bringing it to Disney.

ONCE UPON A TIME

For years there had been different versions of the film planned. I think they even talked about doing it as an animated film at one point. It really had been around for while. I remember, when I went to James Lapine – who wrote the stage play with Stephen Sondheim – I told him that I wanted to make a film of Into The Woods and he said, “I would love you to do it, but can you actually get it made this time!”

So myself and my producing partner John DeLuca brought the project to Disney. I was so impressed that they wanted to do this because, in a way, it really is pushing the boundaries of what they do, and I was impressed that they wanted to expand the definition of what a modern fairytale could be.

It’s different and very unique. It has all the wonderful characters that we know and it brings them all together. It’s sort of like the Avengers of fairytale characters. But it becomes a very important cautionary tale about life and about what happens in life. It becomes much more than a fairytale; it becomes about truth.

PLANTING THE SEEDS

I was really excited to lift Into The Woods off the stage and put it on film. The first thing that I did was ask James Lapine to write the screenplay because, while we had to reimagine it as a movie, I really wanted to make sure that we retained the integrity and the substance of the original. So James came on board and we just started from the very beginning. Stephen Sondheim made changes and worked with us throughout too so the whole process was wonderful.

I brought together a team of collaborators that I have worked with a lot. Dion Beebe, the cinematographer who has worked with me on so many films, is a painter of light and motion with his camera work. A musical needs that kind of movement to it and he understands that so deeply.

When we did Chicago, it was sort of like a baptism by fire for him, launching him into the world of musicals, but he understands it so well now.

I have worked with Colleen Atwood, who did the costumes, a lot before too and it was wonderful. Dennis Gassner the production designer was new to me but I loved his work as well. I just had the crème de la crème to work with and for me it was a collaborative effort. Everybody is sitting down talking and I’m sharing my dreams and ideas, but you never know how that can be realised until you have great people around you and they actually then improve upon anything you imagined it would be.

BRANCHING OUT

The hardest challenge of bringing this story to the big screen was letting go of material that you love on stage but that you know won’t work on film.

For instance, there’s a character on stage – the narrator – who talks directly to the audience. We have narration in our film but obviously there’s no one speaking to the audience directly as a character. Having to learn to let go of that kind of thing was tough. There are materials and songs that you love, that don’t work because they are either sung by a character that is no longer in the piece or, for instance, there are too many ballads in a row. You have to be much more aware of pace on film, so you have to be very smart.

While we were working on it, I never thought about the ‘Disney’ of it all though. I never thought about the film in terms of trying to make sure that it is ‘family friendly’. All of the original story is in there – we didn’t pull back on that at all. Any changes we made were not for those reasons. They were just to make it work as a film.

Luckily, though, that kind of thing is built into the story. It starts with a great deal of fun and humour and forward propulsion; it’s an exciting adventure-quest kind of film, and then it turns darker and we learn what happens after the ‘happily ever after’. There’s still humour to that too, of course, but it becomes a real cautionary tale about life and it becomes much more true and real.

That’s what I’ve always loved about the piece from the very beginning. I love that it is a joyous and fun romp but in addition it has something underneath that it’s saying about life and about the world.

GROWING THE CAST

My philosophy about casting is that if you have done your job you actually don’t have to make any choices because they’re made for you. The hope for me is that an actor comes in and claims the role and says “This is mine” and that happened all throughout this. Emily Blunt came in and said “This is my role” as the Baker’s Wife and she brought the humour, the heart, the warmth and the vulnerability, and she can sing! It was an amazing combination of things for all these characters. It was the same thing with Chris Pine. I had no idea he was funny and I had no idea he could sing – I just didn’t know him in that way. And he just claimed the role of Cinderella’s Prince for himself. I had always wanted to work with Meryl Streep – who doesn’t? So she was the first person

I cast in the film. I asked her if she would do it and she was excited about working with Stephen Sondheim and myself and James Lapine and about working on a musical... and she’s never played a witch before! The role has such great complexity to it and she was just excited by the challenge and really ready for it. It was a dream for me because she brings even more than you can imagine. What you hope she’ll bring, she brings even more. She loves to do the work and she brings every pore of her being to it and she sets the bar so high. She was there on the first day of rehearsals, throwing herself into it and it was so impressive to see how she worked with it.

I asked Johnny Depp to play the Wolf.

We had worked on Pirates Of The Caribbean: On Stranger Tides together and he said to me that he was excited about trying different things, playing some smaller roles and being part of an ensemble and I told him that this part was it.

He was thrilled because he had played Sweeney in Sweeney Todd and he was excited to do another Sondheim musical. Plus he loved the idea of playing the big bad wolf – that was really exciting for him. And he loved being a part of an ensemble, which is what this is. It’s a fantastic ensemble of actors.

THE EVERYMAN

I was so thrilled to have James Corden on board. He did a reading of the musical for us two years ago. He played the Baker and he just claimed the role. I couldn’t even imagine anybody else who could bring the same kind of humour, but also the same kind of depth to the role. He brings such strength to the role and has such a sense of the ‘everyman’ – he is definitely the kind of person you can connect with.

He and Emily Blunt are us in this story and they are the centre of the whole piece so it was really important that you feel that accessibility, that warmth and spirit from the character. And who doesn’t love James? He’s just so connectable, so funny and so wonderful. I knew there was no choice after the reading he gave us. I was thrilled when we were able to cast him and I’m excited for people – especially American audiences – to get to know him better.

ENSEMBLE ASSEMBLE!

One of the great joys of having a rehearsal process – which is very rare in film – is that you get to work on the balance between the actors. That’s when you create a company. That’s when everyone understands what their part of the film is and how they fit in. I felt like everybody in this case was really cheering on the other person to do well and I think you even feel that in the film.

And I think that, because of the rehearsal time we had, the tone is really clear. There’s a heightened reality, but there’s a great deal of truth to it too because at the end you are actually  asked to really care for these characters and believe in them and understand them, and if they are played two-dimensionally, that wouldn’t work. So the whole cast really brought reality to the heightened reality that they’re in and I feel that, across the board, it’s very consistent.

I really wanted it to have a sense of fantasy but also really feel true so that you really feel for these people and feel for the characters. That’s what I was aiming for, and that’s the balance I feel that we were able to achieve. TF

Into The Woods release on 9 January 2015