REVIEW: Wildwood

    Travis Knight's Wildwood has already generated above-normal discourse about the merits and application of animation as an artform. "Don't you realize that animation isn't just for KIDS, by Jove!?" (Don't you realize ... lots of us have been saying that for a while now?) This connects to a much larger conversation about the stigma the artform has held, a conversation that has generally placed the onus on animation--and animators--to prove they can be as good as "real films" and "real filmmakers."

    Animation as a form will need sustained support--from more than just the crowd who waited until now to decide that animated movies could be "good, actually." But Wildwood itself offers other contributions that I imagine will carry the field much further.

    Oregonian preteen Prue McKeel ignores her parents' instruction to not take her brother, Mac, outside. When a flock of crows descend and carry her brother off into the woods, Prue and the neighborhood weirdo fall into an enchanting wild domain full of bandits and warriors and all manners of wild beasts in order to bring him back.

    While I do support the voice acting industry as its own pool, in my honest experience, the familiarity of the voice matters much less than the performer's ability to recreate the feel of spontaneous, organic conversation--to disguise the reality that these words are emerging from a person behind a microphone in a sound booth. This is something the cast does very, very well. I recognized Carey Mulligan right off, but her performance as Alexandra, the sort of White Witch analogue, had all the gravitas of a fairy-tale villain, and all delivered with grace and ease. 

    Most of the cast is this way. I had the frequent experience of watching this film and recognizing a voice but not being able to place it until late in the film, or even during the end credits. And it's a pretty stacked cast, drawing upon the likes of Mahershala Ali, Jake Johnson, Angela Bassett, Awkwafina, and a dozen or so others.

    Stop-motion has always been a particularly difficult method of animation. In relying on physical materials to tell the story, it tends to be more proximate to reality than most other forms of the medium. This is a very high-risk/high reward scenario in an artform where verisimilitude can easily work against its own favor. Stop-motion has historically struggled with the rendering of human characters especially. I'd still say that the animal figures, like the majestic eagle Prue soars on midway through, were more captivating to me than most of the peoplefolk, but I was still impressed with how easily I bought into the human interactions.

    Where the medium really comes to life is in the breadth of this fantasy otherworld. This film has it both ways--vast and expansive yet also intricate and tactile. There's something very rewarding about seeing the band of coyote soldiers marching around in red suits with muskets yet still moving as only a coyote ever would.

    There are some spaces where the narrative coasts a little on the shorthand and goodwill of other fantasy adventures. Early on, there's some talk about Prue wanting to grow up too fast, which is why she gives no consideration for magic or fairy tales. And so when her dad tells her these things have value, that's our cue that she is going to spend the next two hours having some kind of spiritual awakening about these things.

    But by the time we return to this point, we are expected to just ignore how untested her father's theorem has been. Little of Prue's successes or failures have come down to how she has accepted or rejected the existence of magic. She shows some initial shock that birds can talk and coyotes wear pants, but she doesn't have any specific trouble integrating into this world after the fact. Neither does she solve many of her problems by choosing a more childlike method. I don't know how I'd cast "yells at tree to tell her what she wants" or "drugs her parents" as her holding the magic of fairy-tales in her heart. You could maybe argue that she's been learning to appreciate the magic in herself--and there is a specific moment of payoff with this in the climax. Even so, that's still a little too much water in the soup.

    Mind you, while this kind character economy has been implemented in epic fantasy, it's also not unprecedented for the protagonist more to serve as just audience's window into Wonderland. It's not always essential that the protagonist's interior world be as intricate as the vistas they are exploring. So, I'll count this less as a flaw and more maybe a missed opportunity.

    Wildwood may turn the tide. We may be on the dawn of getting an animated Best Picture Winner. We may also just be living through animation's La La Land moment where the idea of reviving a genre sounds like just the kind of thing the younger generation can secure bragging rights for--but eventually the novelty wears off, and suddenly everyone's asking why we're taking cartoons so seriously. 

    At the end of the day, animation is still the realm of fantasy. Even a "mature" animated film such as this still demands that you suspend your disbelief. And the "no filter" generation will have to really decide whether this is a train they'll actually feel like boarding. But it's a train that will press forward with or without them. 

            --The Professor