A Wrinkle in Time (2018)

Our Father, Who Art in Hyperspace
or
Wrapping it Up in the Third Tesseract

Gosh, I think it's been a half-century since I read Madeleine L'Engle's "A Wrinkle in Time," which won the Newberry Prize (and that was the reason I read it). The particulars of the book have long passed on, but I remember how well she captured childhood angst and alienation—for an adult, she knew a lot about the trials of being a kid—and the introduction to the mind-blowing concept of a tesseract (which she described simply as a fourth dimensional space—if a square is two dimensions, a cube is its progression in three, then a tesseract is the fourth configuration). When I read it, it made absolute sense that, given a fourth dimension, a tesseract would be the way to cross space to other places, other dimensions. It was a matter of not-simple geometry and will. L'Engle made you believe...because if she knew what made you tick, she probably had a good handle on the Universe, as well.

Well, it's been 65 years since the book was published (after being rejected by all the major publishers), has never NOT been in print (owing to its popularity) and, in that time, we've seen space-time, warp-speed (Star Trek), "folding space" (Dune), "hyper-space" (Star Wars) and the ever-handy "wormhole" feature as short-cuts in space.

Disney's second attempt at making an adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time (after a 2003 Canadian adaptation that, when L'Engle was asked if it lived up to her expectations, famously said "I expected it to be a disaster and it didn't disappoint me.") has less of an "Afterschool Special" vibe and certainly creates a bigger canvas (when representing the Universe, after all). The cast of kids is great—with an especially high fist-pump for Deric McCabe of making the toughest character work as both Purpose and Antagonist, rather than "that annoying kid" who just complicates things—and lead Storm Reid as the hero on the hero's journey.

Meg Murry (Reid) is miserable. School is boring and unbearable. She's the oldest kid who has to "grow up a little early" because Dad's gone in the family dynamic. That "Dad" (Chris Pine) is a theoretical physicist who has been absent for four years—and nobody has any explanation why—is a big heart-shaped keyhole in Meg's psyche. All of her issues seem to stem from that empty space—her relation to her Mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw), her reception at school (where his disappearance is a source of "Mean Girl" torture) and, basically, everything.

But, all that changes with the appearance of Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon), a being whom her little brother Charles Wallace (McCabe) has befriended and she mentions a way of traversing time and dimensions called utilizing a tesseract, which Whatsit hints is behind what the elder Murry was studying and might well have created the situation of his disappearance. She is an astro-traveller, who, with Mrs. Who (Mindy Kaling), and Mrs. Which (Oprah Winfrey) help, Meg, Charles Wallace, and a tag-along sympathizer, Calvin (Levi Miller) on a quest to go and rescue Dad, and make the Universe and, thus, life better.

That's such a galaxy crunching scenario that it squeezes the story to white-dwarf proportions, but that is essentially that. It's Wizard of Oz, with cosmology replacing dream-states brought on by trauma, and Ava DuVernay's film of it basically takes the Oz scenario and expands on the "feel-good" aspects without dealing too much with the mechanics of how we got here in the first place. One gets the impression that everything is done by "wishing it were so" which is not exactly what L'Engle was going for (see, kids, don't get too carried away with your work wasn't exactly a theme of hers, but it seems essential to The Disney Version). The kids use Dad's work to essentially save him AND the work, validating it and him...and themselves in the process.

And that's what "gets" me about this Wrinkle in Time, as much as it struggles to "gee-whiz" me with color and imagination, pushing my buttons, but not engaging my mind, it fairly buries the world-expanding concepts it is supposed to celebrate. The movie makes the experience an internal one, not a possibilities-expanding one, and that's antithetical to the source-work. It's sure a spectacle, but it's one of those movies where (probably due to some studio dumbing-down, maybe?) things happen because you want them to happen with no limitations and no ground-rules, but is made glossy enough that it thinks it smears over the improbability and objections and resulting emptiness such processes invoke when there's nothing solid behind it.

Meg explains a tesseract—but it's not in the movie

The other thing about the movie that bugs me is that the kids are very down-to-Earth and respectable—they're deserving of something mind-blowing to happen to them—but the adults are not awe-inspiring, not in any sense, but merely curiously eccentric or (in the case of Oprah's Which) too deliberately "sagey," who do magic things that make everything work out better because that's what's to be expected. There's never a sense of real peril or real stakes, and with mentors who are less inspiring and more window-dressing.

I walked out underwhelmed, but secretly glad I'd read the book so many years ago because, frankly, the movie wouldn't have inspired me to read it.

One wants a Wrinkle in Time to invoke a sense of wonder, rather wondering what went wrong.

Selma

...Is Marching On
or
Uneasy Lies the Head That Wears a Crown

Selma begins with Dr. Martin Luther King (David Oyelowo) very uncomfortable dressing in tux and tails.  His wife Coretta (Carmen Ejogo) walks in, dressed to the nines, as he fusses, saying that he feels uncomfortable dressed for a formal occasion—all of his constituents will look at him in such finery and might lose faith that he could lead them in any sort of struggle, when their lives are so distant from such pomp.  It's not the clothes that make him uncomfortable. It's the whole setting, even if he is being awarded the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize.

Selma, the film of the Civil Rights peace marches of 1965, is revolutionary in many ways: looking at the politics of social change and how events spark and accelerate it (Lincoln touched on this, too);  it de-mythologizes King, showing the man—the passion for his cause, but also the conflicts that stymied his efforts, both personally and as a catalyst for change*; and it is shepherded, produced, co-written, and realized by a woman (we're not quite so enlightened where that isn't so commonplace it doesn't require mention...but we shall eventually overcome).

To the first point, there are as many minutes spent in "meetings" for strategizing as are spent in the streets actively carrying out the marches: King meets with the current-president, Lyndon Johnson (Tom Wilkinson) in a tense meeting in the Oval Office—King pushing for action over minority voting rights, where Southern officials actively are keeping African-Americans from voting, and thus having any sort of voice in politics or serving on juries; Johnson pushing back, concentrating on his War on Poverty goals, deflecting any voting legislation as being "too much too soon;"  both sides have confab's—the do-gooders, even the racists, all trying to find power in numbers.

But events propel things faster than Johnson, King, or anyone else can anticipate—the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama is bombed killing four children—and without enough blacks on the voting roles, the jury against the Klansman accused of the murders would be only comprised of whites. It is a crime that can not stand, but the chance of any unprejudiced justice is nil. And so King, after much deliberation with his lieutenants, decides that Selma, Alabama is where his Southern Christian Leadership Conference will stage demonstrations in the streets, marching for voting rights, something opposed by all the politicos in Alabama (including Governor George Wallace, played, rather sneeringly, by Tim Roth), Sheriff Jim Clark, and, also, ironically, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in Selma, who see King as something of a carpetbagger, wanting to move in and undermine their own efforts. With so many conflicts, so many factions—even in his own fragmented coalition—it is amazing that King was able to focus and keep his "eyes on the prize."

The film is top-notch.  Lee Daniels was attached to direct, but when he left to direct The Butler, director Ava Duverney took over, starting from scratch, doing a complete re-write of the script, and overseeing production...on a film that's larger in scope than the low-budget film she's done previously. At the same time, the film couldn't be more personal, framing the large events of the marches with intimacy...giving us a few precious moments with the children talking girlishly as they descend the church stairs before an explosion fills the screen, the carnage happening out of sight, or the candid conversations of various factions behind closed doors or in hushed tones, or the Kings sitting in silence listening to the embarrassing tape sent to Coretta by J. Edgar Hoover (Dylan Baker, not precisely convincing): "I know what you sound like, Martin.."

That is the real strength of Selma—not the big set-pieces, the marches, the recreation of "Bloody Sunday" (the 1965 version—type that into Google Search some time, and see how many of them there are), although they're handled very well. It's in showing the yin and yang of social change. Sure, it's a big thing to march in the streets, to stir up the blood and the thoughts, but social change really comes about in the changing of singular attitudes—one mind at a time.  It seems like too slow a process to those in turmoil, but the changing of minds does not happen one to one, arithmetically, but geometrically, multiplying as it goes. It's not the logic of an attitude that becomes aware of the need of change, it is the feeling of it when "that's the way it's always been done" falls away to "why is that the way it's always been done?"  When past is tossed away for a more humane future.  Time, and truth, don't just march on, civilization does, too, if sometimes at a maddeningly slow pace.

Keep the faith.

* What is fascinating to me about King (beyond his ability to motivate a crowd and stick to his non-violent ideals) and this presentation of him is the notion that his murder—martyrdom, if you will—deified the man. Now, he's a National Monument, a National Holiday, and quoted and referenced by everyone of every political ideology trying to score some political points, even those who would—if he had lived—be just as vociferously condemning him and trying to bring him down...if he had lived. It's as if his assassination let them off the hook for trying to destroy him. But his words—and, more importantly, his actions—continue to inspire, even when co-opted by those who would, most assuredly, have opposed the living, breathing activist. Too bad no one came to their senses when he was alive. History tends to do that.