When Into the Woods hit theaters in 2014, it was a spectacle of sight as well as sound that everyone loved to watch. Crowds were intrigued by this movie version of the clever fairytale mash-up stage show featuring favorite characters such as Rapunzel, Jack (from "Jack and the Beanstalk"), and Little Red Riding Hood, as well as new favorites such as the baker and his wife, a witch, and (briefly) the baker's long lost father.
The film's story expertly weaves all these characters together into one tale where each person is more or less searching for the something, or someone, their heart desires. Though they all have the same goal (to find what they long for), their desires are vastly different. The baker and his wife seek the chance to have a child; Jack seeks a way to buy back his precious cow, Milky White; Cinderella searches for herself as she tries to decide between a life of royalty in the prince's castle or one of servitude to her cruel stepmother and stepsisters. Everyone is seeking what they want most, and in their search, each beloved character in turn ventures into the woods, a place they believe holds all the answers to their own individual hopes and dreams.
At first the woods seem like a wonderful place where one can escape from convention and limitations, and at first each person seems to find what they want. But slowly as the story continues and the characters slip deeper into the woods, their surroundings take on a different look and feel, the woods begin to change and what was once wonderful turns into a nightmare that seems to trap those who venture inside. The answers and happiness each character found slowly begin to fall away and they are left with nothing.
This story may seem like fiction and indeed most of it - mainly witches, handsome princes, magic, Rapunzel's cascading hair, giants and golden eggs, to name a few - is. But the most important part of this story - the setting - is not fiction. Sadly, there are many places in our real world that are like the woods - places that oftentimes we venture into in order to find what we most want: a new job, the best car, a fancy house, maybe that one promotion.
These desires may be very different from those of the fairytale characters in Into the Woods, but a passion for these desires drive us into dangerous places like the woods, nonetheless. I am not saying that ambition is a bad thing to have; in fact, we should always follow our dreams. But in doing so we must be very careful. If we are too focused on our own desires, we may try to take shortcuts to achieve our goals, and - much like in Into the Woods - get caught up in a mess that is beyond our control to fix.
But the story is not finished. In Into the Woods, each character may end up trapped in what they thought they wanted, but they did not stay that way forever. One after the other, each person who ventured into the woods discovers that what they were seeking was never in the dangerous woods to begin with; instead, they possessed it the whole time, in the people they loved, the places they loved, and the things they already owned. With this knowledge, each character is able to escape the woods guided by the hope that they have people who love them and cherished things waiting for them. Now they are able to leave the woods because they have found the things that truly are their hearts' desire. The baker and his wife discover that they have really no need of a child when they love each other, Cinderella learns that personal choice is better that just waiting for fate, Jack - along with his cow - learns that money is not important, and even the witch has a lesson to learn.
This is how our own story should end - with discovery of our desire in what we all ready possess. Once again, ambition is good and it can nurture personal happiness. But in the midst of ambition, let's not lose sight of what is truly important to us. More often than not, what we desire is already a part of us. As a kind of moral, just as in Into the Woods many go in but not all come back out, swallowed by ambitions and desires they never realized they had...
Will you go into the woods? And will you come out?
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