| a Grown-Up's Trip down the Yellow Brick Road, still full of magic and wonder |
WARNING: some spoilers.
My close-second (after Return to Oz) favorite film rendition of Oz is the recent SciFi miniseries, Tin Man. It keeps all the magic and fairy tale of the original works, but this time infusing it with new energy and more modern twists. This is a much more adult version of Oz, but it still maintains the perfect balances of magic and meaning, fairytale and modern images, and it is still distinctly American.
Baum, I believe, would have loved this clever adaptation of his stories. It totally keeps the spirit, the meaning, the heart, and the magic of the Oz tales. The magic is still here in the form of the American fairy tale: a brilliant blending of bits of American life (subberbia fallen, a doomsday machine, drugs, bars and psychics) and mechanisms (robots, super computers, hippie vans) with the land of the fairy (witches, monsters, princes and princesses). The symbolism/meaning of Baum is still here; the commentary on American life is still here.
DG (played by the wonderful Zooey Deschanel, who maintains a difficult balance between wide-eyed child and cynical adult, human and magical creature), like Ozma and other Oz heroines, is a little lost girl on her journey through a warped and symbolic version of her own world. She is a lost princess on the search for her identity. Like Dorothy, her greatest strength is her courage and her ability to make odd friends along the Brick Road.
In the O.Z., DG meets up with symbolic and damaged characters that help her on her way. The Scarecrow figure, Glitch, was once a high ranking bureaucrat, a Daedalous figure that made amazing inventions, some of which are being corrupted and used for great evil by the new government. Here is the threat of the cleverness and American inventiveness and modernization. Even worse, Glitch's brain has been tampered with, reducing him to a gibbering, amnesia-ridden idiot. He doesn't know who he was or what he has fallen from. The Tin Man, Cain, was locked in a tin box and forced to watch his family tortured and killed over and over again. A jaded ex-cop (or Tin Man), he may not be made out of metal, but his heart is certainly absent. Raw, a psychic and spiritual character, is part of a species that is abused for their powers and abilities. The evil witch, Az, uses drugs, spiritualism, brainwashing, torture, and machines to keep her power and do evil.
The production design is very clever. It keeps the magic and mystical nature of Baum's fairy tale (particularly reflecting the illustrations of the books with the girls costumes). It also borrows from the 1930s period (the time of the original film), but warping it into more Film Noir, so that--visually--we have the same world. For instance, the cars and nightclub, the girl's hair styles. Mixing fairy tale images with the Film Noir is a brilliant blend that creates modern darkness and an otherworly feel. Other images are a nod to the original story, particularly the bronze machines with very visible bolts and the electric beams. There is plenty of modern culture mixed in, too. This Oz, just as Baum's Oz, is populated by robots (who actually raised DG) who live in a now-run-down 1950s suburban town that was once a near-Utopia but is now reduced to rubble. DG's father flies a hot air balloon, just as the original wizard did.
The story has enough twists and turns and revelations, darkness and triumph, to maintain the many hours of the miniseries. But the real appeal is all the images and effects, the many very likeable and complicated characters played by quite talented actors. If you're a fan of the original Oz books, or just an adult that likes a good fairy tale, check this one out. It's from the guys that gave us the fantastic and thoroughly clever adult fairy tale, The 10th Kingdom. I hope they'll be giving us more, too.
Also, the DVD quality is fantastic (so much better than the televised version). |
5 Rating
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