The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Friday, January 9, 2015 — 7

By BRIAN BURLAGE

Daily Arts Writer

Joel and Ethan Coen (each 

credited with the “Unbroken” 
screenplay) are no strangers 
to 
the 
idea 

of 
suffering. 

They made “A 
Serious Man” 
in 2009, which 
is 
essentially 

an entire movie 
dedicated 
to 

the exploration 
of 
a 
single 

question: why 
do bad things happen to good 
people? Of course, the Coen 
brothers weren’t the first to 
borrow this question from the 
Book of Job in the Bible, nor 
have they really been successful 
in trying to provide a good 
answer. But what they have 
managed to do is address, with 
great honesty, the perplexity 
man faces when he tries to 
understand his circumstances. 
“Unbroken” proves, to a certain 
extent, that humanity’s struggle 
derives not from his attempt 
to comprehend evil, but rather, 
from his attempt to comprehend 
evil’s intention.

There’s a scene in the film 

that 
illustrates 
this 
point 

very simply. Louis Zamperini 
(Jack 
O’ 
Connell, 
“Harry 

Brown”), the film’s captive yet 
determined hero, stands on the 
roof of a POW barrack with a 
couple of fellow prisoners and 
soldiers. Together they watch 
as American planes bomb the 
Japanese territory just outside 
their camp. As they work to 
extinguish small fires on the 
barrack 
roofs, 
they 
begin 

discussing 
their 
fate. 
One 

prisoner remarks on how close 
the Americans are getting to 
the camp. Another prisoner 
reassures everyone that in a 
few weeks the Allied forces will 
liberate them all. More telling, 
however, is when a prisoner 
claims 
he’s 
overheard 
the 

Japanese officers talk about the 
Allied approach, and how the 
officers had made an agreement 

to kill every prisoner in the 
camp. Suddenly, the prisoners’ 
situation becomes shockingly 
clear: if the Allied forces lose, 
they will all be executed, and 
yet, if the Allied forces win, 
they will all be executed. 
After a moment of silence, one 
prisoner asks, “Then what are 
we supposed to pray for?”

This question is central to 

“Unbroken” and its effort to 
retell the remarkable story of 
Louis Zamperini, an Olympic 
runner who volunteered to fight 
in World War II, who drifted for 
45 days in a small life raft at sea 
and who was taken prisoner by 
the Japanese and tortured for 
nearly two years. We watch as 
conflict after conflict befalls 
him: the death of a friend and 
soldier, the savage assault of 
fellow prisoners, Zamperini’s 
own gruesome and frequent 
beatings. We watch as his face 
takes repeated blows — both 
from 
Mutsuhiro 
Watanabe 

(newcomer 
Miyavi), 
the 

camp’s commander, and from 
other prisoners – and we see 
it break and heal, break and 
heal what seems to be a dozen 
times. “Unbroken” runs for 137 
minutes, and a solid 110 of them 
take us straight into the grit of 
Zamperini’s suffering. Soon the 
prisoner’s 
question 
becomes 

more relevant for us, as the 
audience: where is the hope in 
all this misery?

Zamperini’s 
story 
is 
a 

testament to the unbreakable, 
irreducible will of humankind, 
and to the power of the mind 
in times of enormous adversity. 
However, Angelina Jolie, in 
her directorial debut, tells this 
grand story with sufficient 
grace, but not the necessary 

grace. 

Scenes are too often lost to 

the drama of the endeavor; 
the film actively tries to make 
the audience believe in the 
value of the story. But the 
story itself, even if it had been 
filmed on a $100 budget with 
an iPhone camera, would be 
able to deliver its own value 
a thousand times over. The 
narrative doesn’t need any 
additional drama, yet too often 
Jolie tries to streamline it as if 
the emotion needs a cue. Take, 
for example, the flashbacks 
that 
Zamperini 
experiences 

while Watanabe is beating him 
senseless. The scene shifts 
between Zamperini running 
shirtless on a beach and lying 
shirtless in a pool of blood in 
a Japanese POW camp. The 
opposing images do nothing 
to complement one another; 
instead, given the fact that at 
one point Zamperini had the 
choice to leave the camp but 
decided to stay, this flashback 
sequence almost makes you 
root against Zamperini for 
not 
taking 
his 
chance 
to 

escape. This kind of audience 
resignation 
(withdrawing 

empathy 
from 
Zamperini’s 

story) is indirectly elicited far 
too often in the film. 

Another major issue is the 

film’s conclusion, which occurs 
suddenly and fails to provide 
the joyous emotion or relief the 
viewer has been anticipating 
for two hours. After so much 
anguish, despair and defeat, 
the short-lived victory at the 
end of the film feels a bit like 
self-mockery. It’s as though the 
victory is not what matters. It’s 
as though Zamperini’s story 
hinges only on the degree of 
his suffering, and that through 
it, through his endless abuse as 
a victim and a POW, does the 
significance of his story finally 
emerge. For the film to be titled 
“Unbroken” seems almost, well, 
backward. At the end of it all, 
we’re again left wondering 
without any real direction or 
answer: what are we supposed 
to hope for? 

Film’s stars talk 
‘Into the Woods’

Anna Kendrick and 
Chris Pine sing the 
praises of musical 

adaptation

By VANESSA WONG

Daily Arts Writer

“Into the Woods” may have 

earned its name as a Sondheim 
musical, but the Disney film 
revamp adds a modern twist. In 
a conference call The Michigan 
Daily attended, “Into the Woods” 
‘s storybook couple Anna Kend-
rick (“Pitch Perfect”) and Chris 
Pine (“Star Trek”) — Cinderella 
and Prince Charming, respec-
tively — discussed the challenges 
of bridging the stage-to-film genre 
differences and ushering a classic 
fairytale into a new era.

Though any given first grader 

could coherently summarize the 
Brothers Grimm tales featured in 
“Into the Woods,” the stars argue 
that a new adaptation still holds 
relevance.

“The great thing was that 

(director Rob Marshall, “Chi-
cago”) really embraced a modern 
sensibility for all the characters, 
because since these stories kind 
of belong to the ages, you know, it 
makes sense that in some ways we 
update them every generation,” 
Kendrick said.

And update them we do. The 

film’s Cinderella differs from other 
renditions in that she has a greater 
awareness of the individual agen-
cy she has to shape her life’s trajec-
tory. Kendrick explains how she 
made Cinderella’s timeless charac-
ter her own “sort of over-thinking, 
over-logical, neurotic princess,” 
even as the world seems to be col-
liding around her.

“I think modern women have 

a tendency to over-think every-
thing and they don’t trust their gut 
and we have to look at everything 

from every angle and find the right 
decision, and she’s doing that the 
entire piece until something that 
she really has to reckon with hap-
pens,” Kendrick said. “You know, 
when the community is in crisis, 
suddenly it’s very clear for her 
what’s important ... she’s very cen-
tered and she’s very calm, more so 
than she is in any other moment in 
the piece.”

In contrast, Pine took on a 

more satirical portrayal of Prince 
Charming.

“Everybody in this film goes 

through these really wonderfully 
complex journeys and they expe-
rience joy and heartache and sor-
row and grief. And then my prince 
is just way more two-dimensional 
than that, and … I think that I had 
a lot of fun bringing some levity to 
the picture, or tried to — there’s a 
bit of a buffoon in the prince,” Pine 
said. “Cinderella gives him the 
chance to really feel and to really 
connect with her, and I think he 
does for a brief second, but then 
does make the choice to kind of go 
back and run off and relive over 
and over and over again this story-
book life that he is so accustomed 
to.”

Because of its heightened real-

istic awareness, “Into the Woods” 
sheds the idea that the stories of 
the Brothers Grimm are nothing 
more than a sweet bedtime story. 
Instead, it offers entertainment for 
children and adult audiences alike.

“There’s the element where it’s 

pure fantasy and it’s exciting for 
kids and then there’s an element 
that’s really specifically centered 
towards parents, which is we have 
to be careful what we tell our chil-
dren, and children take lessons to 
heart, and it’s sort of about under-
standing that they’re listening to 
us even if doesn’t feel that way,” 
Kendrick said.

But 
successfully 
updating 

familiar tales and their charac-
ters wasn’t the only thing the 
film adaptation had to master. 

At its core, “Into the Woods” is a 
musical, with an incredible, well-
known score by one of Broadway’s 
greatest geniuses. The film adap-
tation must do Sondheim justice, 
and though both Kendrick and 
Pine have previous singing expe-
rience, molding their technique to 
fit a new discipline was a welcome 
challenge. 

“The musical theater genre is 

very specific, and the sound that 
you’re going for is obviously quite 
different than something like the 
country music I did before. But 
I had a lot of fun learning the ins 
and outs of the technique and of 
the genre,” Pine said.

Kendrick agreed, calling this 

performance “harder, a lot harder” 
than her 2012 work in “Pitch Per-
fect.” But still, she said, “singing 
Sondheim is so rewarding and ful-
filling and it was just, it was just a 
dream come true.”

It also helps that they’re in good 

company. From director Mar-
shall to accomplished lead actors 
Meryl Streep (“The Devil Wears 
Prada”), Johnny Depp (“Pirates of 
the Caribbean”) and Emily Blunt 
(“The Adjustment Bureau”), “Into 
the Woods” features a strong, star-
studded cast. For two actors mak-
ing the technical jump, there’s no 
better place to be.

“I think Rob really set the tone 

in the beginning. You know, he’s a 
director that comes from the the-
ater world so he recognized the 
importance and the real luxury 
of having a month of rehearsal 
before you ever show your wares 
to the public. And he made sure to 
build that in,” Pine said. “And even 
though, all of us, we didn’t get a 
chance to work with everyone, we 
did get a chance in that month to 
see one another and to see what 
everybody was doing. And I think 
that really helped infuse the proj-
ect with a sense of community and 
that we’re all kind of on the same 
page. And I think you’ll hopefully 
feel that great feeling in the film.”

DISNEY

“Ugh, moooooooom, I already cleaned my room.”

‘Unbroken’ cracks 
under its own weight

What are we 
supposed to 

hope for?

UNIVERSAL

“My leg!”

Gorgeous,‘Wild’ hike

By REBECCA LERNER

Daily Arts Writer

“What the fuck have I done?” 

This sentiment echoes like a 
heartbeat 
through 
the 
first 

scenes of “Wild,” based on the 
bestselling memoir, as inexpe-
rienced hiker Cheryl Strayed 
(Reese Witherspoon, “Mud”) 
begins 
her 

1,100 mile jour-
ney 
to 
emo-

tional recovery 
on the Pacific 
Crest 
Trail. 

Strayed’s pain 
is 
introduced 

even 
before 

she is, through 
the groans of 
agony that come from a black 
screen, leading to an image of 
her torn-up feet due to hiking 
hundreds of miles in ill-fitting 
boots. Though she loses her 
boots, she continues to walk 
through both her emotional and 
physical pain. 

As Strayed first sets out on 

the trail, the audience is forced 
to play connect-the-dots with 
jagged flashbacks to put togeth-
er the course of events that 
led her there. Though she has 
recently endured a divorce with 
her ex-husband Paul (Thomas 
Sadoski, 
“The 
Newsroom”), 

the true tragedy of her life is 
the death of her mother (Laura 

Dern, “Enlightened”), whose 
optimistic and curious spirit is 
introduced in dreamy but short 
scenes. After losing her mother, 
whom she describes as “the love 
of my life,” Strayed embarked on 
a rampage of self-destruction, 
including the heroin use and 
promiscuity that result in her 
divorce and odyssey on the PCT. 

Some of the most anxiety-

provoking scenes come not from 
the life-threatening conditions 
or rattlesnakes, but from the 
sole idea of a woman hiking 
alone for 94 days. A naïve and 
inexperienced hiker, Strayed 
often relies on the kindness of 
strangers for rides, food and 
encouragement in ways that 
her male hiking counterparts 
cannot. 
However, 
the 
dou-

ble-edged sword of this help 
rears an ugly head in the form 
of unwanted attention from 
severely creepy male hunters. 
Later when Strayed meets with 
fellow hikers, they dub her “The 
Queen of PCT,” because strange 
men are always willing to help 
her. Strayed’s weary smile at 
this supposed “gift” forces the 
audience to look deeper into 
the fist-clenching nervousness 
felt whenever she is alone and 
confronted by a man on the 
trail. The irony is that while 
these men perceive women like 
Strayed as blessed to receive 
favors and male attention, there 

is always an underlying danger 
present that they do not recog-
nize.

Witherspoon’s portrayal of 

the emotionally distant Strayed 
is authentic and well-done, but 
could have used more assistance 
from the supporting characters. 
Unsurprisingly, the film’s most 
touching moments come from 
her interactions with her moth-
er and her brutally honest best 
friend Aimee (Gaby Hoffmann, 
“Obvious Child”). Her exchang-
es with them show who Strayed 
was before her life went to hell, 
and why an audience should 
care that she finds her way back. 
When trapped in the confines 
of her own internal monologue, 
Strayed can become almost 
intolerably 
self-aggrandizing 

and pretentious. But in between 
eye-roll-provoking 
proclama-

tions of “how wild it all is,” 
Strayed proves herself to be 
funny, self-reliant and strong. 

Directed beautifully by Jean-

Marc Vallée, the film alternates 
between long shots of the harsh 
but stunning wilderness and 
close-ups 
of 
Witherspoon’s 

grimy, makeup-free face. He 
grounds the narrative well, as 
a love story between a mother 
and a daughter. Strayed walks 
her way to being the woman 
that her mother raised, letting 
the audience experience the les-
sons learned with each footstep.

FILM INTERVIEW
MOVIE REVIEW

MOVIE REVIEW

C+

Unbroken

Rave 20 and 
Quality 16

Universal

B

Wild

Michigan 
Theater and 
Quality 16

Fox Searchlight

