'Into the Woods' :: A Different Take on Cinderella with Anna Kendrick and Chris Pine

In 1985 Stephen Sondheim and James Lapine took a unique approach in bringing some of the Brothers Grimm fairy tales to the musical stage. They took some of the more famous ones - Rapunzel, Jack and the Beanstalk, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood - and combined them with an original one of their own, concerning a baker, his wife and a witch that lives next door. Their collaboration became the hit musical "Into the Woods," which won Sondheim a Tony Award for his score and Lapine one for his libretto against the formidable challenge of "The Phantom of the Opera."

In the ensuing years it's become the most popular of Sondheim's musicals, finding its way into community theaters and high schools throughout the country. For years a film version was floated around, but not until last year did it reach the screen. The film version, directed by Rob Marshall ("Chicago") and released by Disney, was a huge hit when it was released at Christmas, grossing $125,000,000 domestically and nearly $200,000,000 internationally.

The film, which was released on VOD and DVD this week, features an all-star cast led by Oscar-nominated Meryl Streep (as a witch) and featuring Emily Blunt, James Corden, Tracey Ullman, Christine Baranski and Johnny Depp.

Happily ever after?

Also in the cast is a pair of Hollywood's new generation of stars: Anna Kendrick, who plays Cinderella, and Chris Pine, who plays the Prince she falls in love with.

In Sondheim/Lapine's version, Cinderella attends three nights of the Prince's ball, each time fleeing before midnight with her Prince chasing after her. On the third night, the Prince places pitch on the steps of the palace, which leads her to lose a glass slipper that the Prince finds. The Prince seeks her out by combing the kingdom to find the woman that can fit the slipper; but her devious Stepmother (Baranski) has her daughters maim themselves to make the slipper fit. Her ploy doesn't work and the Prince discovers the real Cinderella.

This, though, occurs before a turn of events that nearly destroys the kingdom and sends Cinderella on her own journey of personal discovery as she seeks safety in the woods.

"To me Cinderella's defining quality is bravery, because she has known nothing but neglect her entire life," Kendrick said at the time of the film's release in December when asked about her character. "But when she's presented with a different situation, she overthinks it and she is too logical. She doesn't listen to her heart, she wants to listen to her head, or she wants to try a combination of both.

"Rob (Marshall) was very interested in having a modern sensibility for these characters and I think that's a very modern thing that women do. We cannot listen to our guts, we have to look at everything from every angle and overthink everything. Then for her to allow herself to go into this better situation and realize that it's completely fake: the prince is so vacuous and it's all just a fa�ade. Then when she finds herself in a situation where her community undergoes this great tragedy, it's then that she can focus and say, 'This isn't want I want. I want something real, and I don't know what that is yet, but I'm willing to forego this safe situation to find out what that is, even though right now that's a handful of survivors and I don't know what will happen next.'"

Charming, not sincere

The Prince even says to her, "I was raised to be charming, not sincere."

"I think it's a distillation of precisely who that man is," Pine explained when asked about the Prince. "There are a couple characters in this that I think are taken from the pages of the storybook that remain pretty two dimensional. That's my character, and I think Christine Baranski's character, the stepmother. The roles we play are to reflect back. Here's a guy that knows he's being watched, he knows he is preening, every movement is kind of thought out beforehand."

Since "Into the Woods" is a fairy tale mashup, Cinderella isn't the only woman that catches the Prince's eye. Once he chases Cinderella into the woods, he quickly switches affection for The Baker's Wife (Emily Blunt), and doesn't care that she's married.

"His journey has nothing to do with these people he's so driven to be with, the Baker's wife or Cinderella," Pine continued. "It's all about this kind of inner desire to be seen, and to play out this story that he's probably been playing out for generations. He's just like an LP that keeps on running itself back.

"There's one moment that he's given the opportunity to see what his effect has on Cinderella, where she says, 'Well, look at me. I mean, look what's happened.' And he thinks about it for a second and you can see that it does hurt him. (In this) he does have a moment of inner reflection, but then chooses to get back on the horse and again play out the two-dimensional story that he has been playing out for generations. So I had a lot of fun playing a guy with big hair and a tan, and just loving himself. It was a joy."

Cinderella takes charge

It's still up to Cinderella to take charge of the story. In what may be seen as a twist "happily ever after," Cinderella actually rejects the Prince. Yet she can still live happily ever after with her decision to be independent. That might even be a better message for today's audiences.

"I think that this has something very mature and modern to say about separation," Kendrick said. "When Cinderella and the Prince, they have this conversation and she kicks him to the curb. The fact that it's done with so much civility and compassion, I think my parents set an amazing example for me because they divorced when I was 15 and we're having Thanksgiving dinner together. I know that that's not always the case, but I think that that scene meant so much to me because I feel love for people that I have loved, and I think that's so beautiful, and I think that's such an important lesson for children that people can have disagreements but it doesn't mean one is bad and one is good. I feel so grateful to my family for setting this amazing example within separation, and I hope that that scene is a reflection of that."

While his character was simplistic and two-dimensional, Pine articulated very complex thoughts about romantic myths in fairy tales. "I think obviously we tell each other stories in life and as storytellers that's what we do," he said. "We tell each other stories so we can understand the world better. There is catharsis in which we understand the models of what a hero could be and what the hero's journey as a human being is all about.

A different take

"Into the Woods" does contradict those traditional fairy tale stories, but Pine concurs with Kendrick that it may be a healthier way to look at love stories.

"But unfortunately I think sometimes those stories too can be very prohibitive and confining. This idea that - especially in Western culture, Western literature (as seen in the stories of Tristan and Isolde and Romeo and Juliet) - there's some kind of all-encompassing burning passionate love that will never die out unless you both die is depressing and not real.

"I think it's very telling that this relationship (between Cinderella and the Prince), they don't have a conversation until the last moment where they break up," he continued. "I think the beautiful thing about it is that here's a woman that chooses to get out of the story similar to those of Romeo and Juliet and Tristan and Isolde.

"It's like, 'check it out, I don't want you, 'cause you're lame, and you don't listen to me.' But actually in that final moment he does listen and I think it's very telling for the Prince that he says: 'Is this what you want?' He's actually being very respectful and the boundaries are very clear. I think there's the trope in literature that somehow we're not whole unless we have another isn't fair to the uniqueness and wonderfulness of the individual. It's that we can complement one another greatly, but we are not the source of each other's happiness, especially if you don't know whom the hell you're talking to. So anyway, yeah."

Pine sings!

This is the first time we've heard Pine sing. Kendrick was a known musical performer, if you saw one of her early roles in "Camp." Pine was so green that he didn't even know the play.

"I was the only person I think that didn't know what 'Into the Woods' was, so my agent called me and asked: 'Do you want to audition for 'Into the Woods,' the musical?'" Pine recalled. "I said, well, that's great. Meryl Streep and Rob Marshall. Yeah, count me in!' I had a night to prepare a song to go sing in Rob Marshall's living room, and then I made the mistake of going online and Googling what I was getting into. Then it dawned on me the kind of magnitude, the pantheon that was touching with this music."

It became the director's job to make the actor comfortable, even if the actor hadn't been hired yet. Marshall did just that. "Rob is a lovely [man] and [producer] John [De Luca], they're lovely in that they come from theater so they understand. Cinema is a visual medium, as is theater, but theater, I feel like the directors in theater, they understand because you spend so much time with us poor, vulnerable actors before we get on stage that you understand how much kind of warmth you need. So to step into that living room having not sung for anyone but myself and my soap dish was terrifying, but he was lovely and we spent a lot of time talking about singing, what it might be like, and then the piano was brought out, and then he and John joined me, I think, in singing. It is hard work and Sondheim is very technical, but it's a great joy, and to remember that what we do is joyful, it was a great thing."

"Into the Woods" is available on DVD and VOD.