A Wrinkle in Time
Jason's meetings last night were cancelled due to weather, but the weather and roads were fine by afternoon, so we went ahead and saw A Wrinkle in Time. I was excited and curious about the movie and tried hard to put aside my own images and expectations from the book, which I think is definitely the way to approach this one. It's not nearly as different from its source material as Where the Wild Things Are (a movie I loved) but there are a lot of changes, some of which I have thoughts about. I'll put those under the cut for those who haven't seen it and don't want any spoilers.
1. Charles Wallace is adopted. On the one hand, I approve of this choice for all the reasons mentioned in this interview with the screenwriter. It allowed for additional diversity and normalization of adoption as a way of being part of the family. But when Alex Murray (the dad) decides to save Meg, rather than risk losing both her and Charles Wallace, even though he lampshades it with "I can't lose both my children," it still felt icky to me that he "happens" to be choosing his biological child over his adoptive child. I also object to his adoptive status because of the way it presents mystery around his potential origins (Ah, yes, the super-smart strange adopted child, clearly a child of aliens/result of genetic engineering/lost heir to Atlantis!) in a way that is opposed to the source material. I think that if I had made that decision, I would have chosen to make both the kids adopted.
2. The Mrs are not old ladies. I think the presentation of Mrs Whatsit, in particular, as looking like a "tramp" (in the sense of a homeless person) is important to the sense of threat that Meg and Mrs Murray perceive when they first meet her. And the presentation of all three of them as old women--such that the kids are startled to hear Mrs Whatsit described as "young"--is important to how we tend to minimize and ignore older women in our culture. The addition of poverty to that impression is an additional "disguise" of power and importance. Making them clearly other-worldly from the get-go undermines all of that and diminishes the excitement of their transformation in other contexts. I did find it interesting that the kids refer to them collectively as "the Mrs" rather than my recollection of the book referring to them as "ladies"--a word that I don't think is used in the movie. Having them be fabulous and multi-cultural is great, but I think I would have gone for more of a reveal.
3. Mrs Whatsit is mean. I have not referred to the book, but my recollection is that the character does express doubts about Meg once, but shuts up about it after being reassured by Charles Wallace. The movie character's continued harping about it made it feel like an example of how women are the enforcers of so much of misogyny and felt particularly inappropriate for a white character interacting with a black character of less status and power.
4. Camazotz as the source of The Darkness. In the book, Camazotz is an Earth-like planet that has fallen under the sway of The Darkness, with The It as the particular local villain. It's a cautionary tale for Earth, not the enemy itself. I think eliding that distinction weakens The Darkness as an evil.
Speaking of which, I'm a little surprised that DuVernay didn't find a way to shift away from the Dark=Bad/Light=Good dichotomy, which has been so often used in racist ways. Sure, it's in the source material that way, but she was changing so much else, couldn't she have made it The Redness, or The Void?
On the other hand, I really liked how they handled actually depicting Camazotz, the Red-Eyed Man and the beach scene and the prison. But I think they underplayed The It as a giant brain in a way that undermines one of the key points of the book: that logic can be cruel without emotion to mediate its conclusions. I was also sorry that they didn't show the kids fighting the rhythm of The It with spontaneity and imagination.
5. Not explaining the tesseract. They shot a scene with Meg explaining about tesseracts using the ant-on-a-string analogy that is used in the book. It was in the trailer, but not in the movie (Side rant: if I were in charge of the world, it would be perhaps not a law, but a generally accepted standard, that once you put something in the trailer it goes in the final cut.) I would have been happy to cut 3-5 seconds off several of the (very pretty) CGI sequences to leave time for that scene in the movie.
Additional thoughts: I also missed Aunt Beast (though Alice and Jason caught a brief shout-out to them that I missed) and Charles Wallace's silence such that non-family tend to think he's stupid. I kind of hated the "so he's your boyfriend" teasing of Mrs Whatsit re: the Happy Medium (who needed to be a man why?) and I really missed the explanation of the Mrs as the souls of former stars. I object to Calvin not being poor--another opportunity to talk about poverty that they avoided. I liked switching Mrs Murray from a biologist to a physicist, a partner in her husband's work (although they'll have to do a lot of fancy dancing to make that work if they decide to do the sequel, where her biology became more relevant). I thought they did a good job from re-casting the Cold War politics of the source material into a more general philosophical context. I liked the "everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" montage, but I missed Meg being told to hold onto her anger. In general I was sorry that they didn't keep more lines from the book--I think the only one I really recognized was "Wild nights are my glory!"
Overall, the movie is beautiful, the diversity is wonderful, and it's lovely to see someone else's imagination engaged in depicting a story I have loved for more than forty years. It's not perfect and it's not my Wrinkle, but I am ok with that.
I should mention the hiccup in actually seeing the movie: after the ads the screen went to a Chevy logo with the words "Enjoy the show!" while music played for about ten minutes after the point when the trailers should have started. Jo went out to see what she could discover and they told her they were having trouble with the trailer "reel" but the movie should start on time (15 minutes past showtime). Then it didn't, so Jo went back out and then the trailers started--a weird mix, but it did include Solo, which we'd hoped to see. And then the final emergency exits clip and "now for our feature presentation" and then Black Panther started. It took just a second, because of the way BP starts ("Tell me a story, Baba.") and then we all said "That's Black Panther," and Jason leapt over the railing (we were in the first row of the back section) and went to tell the staff they'd got it wrong. Then Wrinkle finally started and Jason came back and all was well. Of course we were already pushing Alice's bedtime, so the movie starting 10 minutes later than it should have done didn't help and I was composing my complaint to the staff in my head for the first section of the movie. But then they had a staff member standing at the exit handing out vouchers for a free movie for each of us, so I am mollified. They apparently told Jo that they were dealing with both a new computer system *and* power outages that morning because of the storm, so they were definitely having a worse day than we were. And now Alice wants to see Black Panther (which she had not, before) so we'll call it even.
This entry was originally posted at https://lillibet.dreamwidth.org/1302909.html. You can comment either place! There are
comments over there now.
1. Charles Wallace is adopted. On the one hand, I approve of this choice for all the reasons mentioned in this interview with the screenwriter. It allowed for additional diversity and normalization of adoption as a way of being part of the family. But when Alex Murray (the dad) decides to save Meg, rather than risk losing both her and Charles Wallace, even though he lampshades it with "I can't lose both my children," it still felt icky to me that he "happens" to be choosing his biological child over his adoptive child. I also object to his adoptive status because of the way it presents mystery around his potential origins (Ah, yes, the super-smart strange adopted child, clearly a child of aliens/result of genetic engineering/lost heir to Atlantis!) in a way that is opposed to the source material. I think that if I had made that decision, I would have chosen to make both the kids adopted.
2. The Mrs are not old ladies. I think the presentation of Mrs Whatsit, in particular, as looking like a "tramp" (in the sense of a homeless person) is important to the sense of threat that Meg and Mrs Murray perceive when they first meet her. And the presentation of all three of them as old women--such that the kids are startled to hear Mrs Whatsit described as "young"--is important to how we tend to minimize and ignore older women in our culture. The addition of poverty to that impression is an additional "disguise" of power and importance. Making them clearly other-worldly from the get-go undermines all of that and diminishes the excitement of their transformation in other contexts. I did find it interesting that the kids refer to them collectively as "the Mrs" rather than my recollection of the book referring to them as "ladies"--a word that I don't think is used in the movie. Having them be fabulous and multi-cultural is great, but I think I would have gone for more of a reveal.
3. Mrs Whatsit is mean. I have not referred to the book, but my recollection is that the character does express doubts about Meg once, but shuts up about it after being reassured by Charles Wallace. The movie character's continued harping about it made it feel like an example of how women are the enforcers of so much of misogyny and felt particularly inappropriate for a white character interacting with a black character of less status and power.
4. Camazotz as the source of The Darkness. In the book, Camazotz is an Earth-like planet that has fallen under the sway of The Darkness, with The It as the particular local villain. It's a cautionary tale for Earth, not the enemy itself. I think eliding that distinction weakens The Darkness as an evil.
Speaking of which, I'm a little surprised that DuVernay didn't find a way to shift away from the Dark=Bad/Light=Good dichotomy, which has been so often used in racist ways. Sure, it's in the source material that way, but she was changing so much else, couldn't she have made it The Redness, or The Void?
On the other hand, I really liked how they handled actually depicting Camazotz, the Red-Eyed Man and the beach scene and the prison. But I think they underplayed The It as a giant brain in a way that undermines one of the key points of the book: that logic can be cruel without emotion to mediate its conclusions. I was also sorry that they didn't show the kids fighting the rhythm of The It with spontaneity and imagination.
5. Not explaining the tesseract. They shot a scene with Meg explaining about tesseracts using the ant-on-a-string analogy that is used in the book. It was in the trailer, but not in the movie (Side rant: if I were in charge of the world, it would be perhaps not a law, but a generally accepted standard, that once you put something in the trailer it goes in the final cut.) I would have been happy to cut 3-5 seconds off several of the (very pretty) CGI sequences to leave time for that scene in the movie.
Additional thoughts: I also missed Aunt Beast (though Alice and Jason caught a brief shout-out to them that I missed) and Charles Wallace's silence such that non-family tend to think he's stupid. I kind of hated the "so he's your boyfriend" teasing of Mrs Whatsit re: the Happy Medium (who needed to be a man why?) and I really missed the explanation of the Mrs as the souls of former stars. I object to Calvin not being poor--another opportunity to talk about poverty that they avoided. I liked switching Mrs Murray from a biologist to a physicist, a partner in her husband's work (although they'll have to do a lot of fancy dancing to make that work if they decide to do the sequel, where her biology became more relevant). I thought they did a good job from re-casting the Cold War politics of the source material into a more general philosophical context. I liked the "everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle" montage, but I missed Meg being told to hold onto her anger. In general I was sorry that they didn't keep more lines from the book--I think the only one I really recognized was "Wild nights are my glory!"
Overall, the movie is beautiful, the diversity is wonderful, and it's lovely to see someone else's imagination engaged in depicting a story I have loved for more than forty years. It's not perfect and it's not my Wrinkle, but I am ok with that.
I should mention the hiccup in actually seeing the movie: after the ads the screen went to a Chevy logo with the words "Enjoy the show!" while music played for about ten minutes after the point when the trailers should have started. Jo went out to see what she could discover and they told her they were having trouble with the trailer "reel" but the movie should start on time (15 minutes past showtime). Then it didn't, so Jo went back out and then the trailers started--a weird mix, but it did include Solo, which we'd hoped to see. And then the final emergency exits clip and "now for our feature presentation" and then Black Panther started. It took just a second, because of the way BP starts ("Tell me a story, Baba.") and then we all said "That's Black Panther," and Jason leapt over the railing (we were in the first row of the back section) and went to tell the staff they'd got it wrong. Then Wrinkle finally started and Jason came back and all was well. Of course we were already pushing Alice's bedtime, so the movie starting 10 minutes later than it should have done didn't help and I was composing my complaint to the staff in my head for the first section of the movie. But then they had a staff member standing at the exit handing out vouchers for a free movie for each of us, so I am mollified. They apparently told Jo that they were dealing with both a new computer system *and* power outages that morning because of the storm, so they were definitely having a worse day than we were. And now Alice wants to see Black Panther (which she had not, before) so we'll call it even.
This entry was originally posted at https://lillibet.dreamwidth.org/1302909.html. You can comment either place! There are
comments over there now.