Two Cents is an original column akin to a book club for films. The Cinapse team will program films and contribute our best, most insightful, or most creative thoughts on each film using a maximum of 200 words each. Guest writers and fan comments are encouraged, as are suggestions for future entries to the column. Join us as we share our two cents on films we love, films we are curious about, and films we believe merit some discussion.
The Pick
Madeline L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time traveled a circuitous path towards publication, but since its release in 1962 the book has been a benchmark for young readers, inspiring/delighting/terrifying children of all ages, across multiple generations. The story of troubled Margaret “Meg” Murry and her travels across a fantastical galaxy alongside her prodigy brother Charles Wallace and friend Calvin O’Keefe in search of her long-vanished father has tantalized readers for years and years, especially the mystical Missuses, Mrs. Whatsit, Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Which.
This year’s feature film adaptation traveled no less circuitous a path. Disney initially purchased the rights to the book in 2010, with the original plan to approach the film with a lower budget and profile ala the studio’s Bridge to Terabithia adaptation. But in the hands of screenwriter Jennifer Lee (co-writer/co-director of Frozen) and director Ava DuVernay (fresh off Selma, and with this film becoming the first woman of color to direct a film budgeted over $100 million), A Wrinkle in Time took on the dimensions of an epic.
Following the plot of the novel closely, Time opens with Meg (Storm Reid) struggling to cope with the ongoing absence of her father (Chris Pine) after he vanished when Meg was young and her adopted brother Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) was just an infant. Joined by Calvin (Levi Miller), the kids are recruited by Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), Who (Mindy Kaling), and Which (Oprah) to rescue Meg’s father from the terrible might of the evil IT, a disembodied malevolence that seeks to devour the universe whole.
Wholly divisive upon release, A Wrinkle in Time inspired both passionate fans and ardent oppositions, with an unfortunate number of detractors attacking the film along gendered and racial lines. Now a little ways away from the film’s initial release, we thought it would be a good idea to travel once more through the tesser and decide whether or not A Wrinkle in Time is worth the trip, or should be ironed out.
Next Week’s Pick:
Proving that not even death can keep a good raconteur down, Orson Welles is once more stoking fierce critical conversation with the release of a ‘new’ movie. The Other Side of the Wind began filming in 1970 and concluded filming in 1976 but legal red tape and the miasma of misfortune that seemed to haunt Welles from project to project kept the film from both completion and release.
But just as the mighty Unicron cannot be deterred from his infinite journey across the cosmos, so to did Wind work its way towards release. After years of arbitration and restorations, Netflix finally released a completed version of the film this month.
The final product divided film fans, with some declaring it a final masterpiece from one of cinema’s great auteurs, while others finding it as ramshackle and sloppily assembled as you would expect from the decade-spanning production.
Masterpiece or misfire? You tell us.
Would you like to be a guest in next week’s Two Cents column? Simply watch and send your under-200-word review on any MCU film to twocents(at)cinapse.co anytime before midnight on Thursday!
Our Guests
I don’t like to compare source material to adaptations. It’s unfair, considering the different strengths and possibilities offered by different media — and it’s far too easy to fall into the trap of correlating “accuracy” with “quality.” That said, Ava DuVernay’s film adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time is better — or at least more important — than the book. The novel, while influential in its own right (and certainly entertaining), is fairly dated (read: very WASPy) in its view of the world.
By contrast this is the first live-action movie with a nine-figure budget directed by a woman of color, and the production is infused with an attention toward empowering its diverse cast. It is important that the Drs. Murry are an interracial couple with multiple PhDs between them, and that Meg is a black female character given agency in a mainstream genre film. It is also important that her brother Charles is adopted. While A Wrinkle in Time is oriented toward the Big Ideas its genre suggests, at its core is a story about family and belonging. The film goes out of its way to depict a more inclusive, expansive vision of family than is typical of mainstream fare, and the film is all the better for it.
This inclusiveness expands beyond the family to the more fantastic characters of the film. The novel’s explicitly Christian references are elided; the underlying values are there, but released from the limitations of a singular faith. And, ultimately, the science fiction is quite good. It’s refreshing to watch a YA genre film that is not so cynical or dystopian in its view of human nature — in fact one that offers something of an antithesis to that worldview. The adventure is exciting because the characters are engaging. Is it perfect? No. But it is better and more entertaining than a lot of other films of its ilk. I desperately wish we could get more stories with this version of the Murry family, although I imagine that isn’t likely.
P.S. I could easily spend the entire 110-minute runtime just staring into Chris Pine’s dreamy blue eyes (@T_Lawson)
The Team
When this big screen adaptation of a book I remember really enjoying as a child was announced, I was very excited. As trailers began to leak out, I became even more excited. Then, scheduling conflicts prevented me from seeing it in a theater and I mostly forgot about it. I’m not sure how or why this happened but I’d put off seeing this until this past week.
This film is further evidence that lackluster reviews need not deter me nor anyone else from seeing a film. In other words, I really enjoyed it. The visuals are fantastic, the story is compelling, and the cast is impressive. It may not be Hogwarts level blow-me-away fantasy, but it’s fun, entertaining, and has an impactful message.
I’m already looking forward to a second watch in the near future. This is a can’t miss film for folks interested in films filled with childlike awe and flights of fancy. (@thepaintedman)
I think DuVernay and Lee made one crucial miscalculation in their approach to adapting this book: L’Engle was a wonderful writer, but dear God was her dialogue never meant to be spoken aloud by actual human lips. No actor alive could make those lines feel like they were something a person might say, and it’s an especially an uphill battle for child actors.
Fortunately, DuVernay has no interest in the naturalistic style of performance and filmmaking that so many others working in genre these days chase, that Nolan-esque adherence to reality that has become shorthand for ‘good’ for many in the audience. A Wrinkle in Time is gloriously abstract, with an aesthetic that closer recalls the psychedelia of ’60s sci-fi than anything we’re familiar with in a post-CGI world. While I can sort of understand why some (many?) tripped over this, if you meet A Wrinkle in Time at the same achingly sincere wave-length along which the film is operating, it is a tremendously powerful journey without a cynical bone in its body. DuVernay steers hard into the themes of empowerment and self-actualization that so defined the book, and the sequences where the film’s imagery realizes these emotions to their fullest (such as Meg’s final, rapturous leap through the tesser) are almost transcendent in their immediacy and power.
Regardless of its other strengths and failures, A Wrinkle in Time is a movie that exists to tell little kids (especially girls [especially girls of color]) that they are beautiful, powerful, and have it within them to change the world with their minds and hearts. And by God is that something worth celebrating.(@theTrueBrendanF)
Unlike some of our other film clubbers this week, I haven’t read the original novel (though it’s always piqued my interest) and I appreciate their insights in that respect.
While this is primarily a film aimed at kids, aspects of its story feel resonated directly with me — father of two, a precocious girl and younger boy. It’s oddly a little all over the place, but all the family stuff is phenomenal and endearing. Without spoiling the context, there’s a specific point in the film where a character cries out in discovery, “Love is the frequency!”, that will go down as one of my favorite movie moments of the year.
The film is so imaginative and strange that some of the weirder stuff just comes off as… kooky. Lettuce dragon? Giant Oprah? Sometimes it’s a bit much. But the movie is full of genuine wonder and emotional heft, and a beautiful work of artistry overall. (@VforVashaw)
Next week’s pick: