A Wrinkle in Time

Although I believe that Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time, like all great novels, is essentially unable to be faithfully transformed into successful cinema, I was gladdened to hear Ava DuVernay would be directing it. Her Selma (2014) was focused and serious of tone. It had conviction. Wrinkle, by contrast, seems distracted, unsure of tone, unfocused and floundering. Worse yet, it comes off as standard, CGI-dependent, mediocre Disney product — the sort of dark, manipulative, all-reaching force you can imagine L’Engle herself fighting against.

The screenplay of L’Engle’s tale of cosmos-journeying children was written by Jennifer Michelle Lee, most famous for having written the all-time victor of Disney brand marketing, Frozen (she also was recently made chief creative officer of Walt Disney Animation, replacing the disgraced John Lasseter). Lee has purged the novel of its original Christian intent, replacing it with vague new age platitudes and trendy hip-hop quotes (Outcast, Hamilton‘s Lin-Manuel Miranda, etc.) Mrs. Whatsit (Reese Witherspoon) describes herself: “We’re warriors who serve the good and light and the universe.” She encourages children to become warriors, too. (“Be a Warrior” is the film’s marketing catchphrase.)

As in the novel, Wrinkle starts on a dark and stormy night. Meg (Storm Reid) can’t sleep and meets her younger, prodigy brother, Charles Wallace (Deric McCabe) in the kitchen. Their scientist father, Alexander (Chris Pine) has been missing for years, and Meg and Charles are social outcasts. Meg and her mother (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) are portrayed by black actors — DuVernay is on record saying she “wanted a cast that reflects the real world.” The children — and a fellow sympathetic student, Calvin (Levi Miller), are soon introduced to Oprah Winfrey as Mrs. Which, Mindy Kaling as Mrs. Who, and Mrs. Whatsit, who send them on a mission to save Alexander from the evil IT, via a tesseract. What is a tesseract? The concept is never explained in the movie, making a confusing plot more so, especially for the audience of children for whom the film is intended.

Though the screenplay is by Lee, the viewer can sense DuVernay’s commitment to the character-building arc of Meg’s emotional journey; the emotions of the book are present, but the mechanics of the plot are disheveled. The children’s journey becomes one garishly colored CGI world after another, one noisy, “action-packed,” cliched set-piece after another, with little room to breathe. At midway, the entourage meet up with The Happy Medium, a female character seemingly arbitrarily portrayed by a male actor (Zach Galifianakis). The poorly conceived set, with all the actors precariously balancing themselves on digital logs, is cringe-inducing. Though, off-setting it, is a vision Mrs. Which reveals, showing IT’s influences on characters back on Earth we’ve previously been introduced to, giving an understanding of evil’s applications — one of the best scenes in the film. The Happy Medium asks that Meg take yoga positions, tap into her energy and center herself. “You just have to find the right frequency — and have faith in who you are,” says Mrs. Which when Meg first journeys through the tesseract. Bleahhh.

To make the film worse, the voices were mixed too low in the soundtrack, with many viewers (myself included) complaining about inaudible dialogue. Also contributing to inaudible dialogue was Ramin (Game of Thrones) Djawadi’s unrelenting yet unmemorable music score (augmented by lite R&B and hip-hop tracks).

Ava DuVernay’s film could have had the opportunity to be a much better film if it hadn’t been based on A Wrinkle in Time; in short, if it had been a new story with new characters and no need to try to update a classic, nearly sixty-year-old, children’s book, one which each reader has already visualized in his head. I can’t recommend this movie to anyone, especially those who have enjoyed the book that it’s based on.

—Michael R. Neno, 2018 Oct 14