A middling re-imagination that is unsure of whether it is a coming of age story or a cautionary tale.
As with most films, the first thing the strikes you about Red Riding Hood, is the title. However, what grabs you first is not what is present in the title but a word that is conspicuously absent. We’re all aware of the fable of an adventurous little girl and her run-in with strangers as the tale of ‘Little Red Riding Hood’. But don’t be fooled by your first glimpse of the protagonist: there is definitely nothing little about Catherine Hardwicke’s reinterpretation. The omission of the word ‘little’ from the title is entirely purposeful. The film’s concerns are closer in age to women in padded brassieres than those in pigtails. Not surprising when you consider the earlier film in Hardwicke’s oeuvre, the first film in the Twilight series.
In fact, Hardwicke’s new heroine, much like Bella, is no ingénue. The film opens to a setup that seems right out of a South Indian romantic tragedy in Eastman color. A village that is isolated from the world, a young girl being pressured into a marriage of convenience by her mother, a father who is perpetually drunk and a childhood sweetheart who wishes to see her happy but is unsure of what he wants. Valerie – for that is the name of the bearer of the red hood – is a particularly free willed girl in a conservative village. She loves her woodcutter, Peter, with a feral intensity that often drags her into dangerous territory. And so it is that her mother, Suzette, decides that she needs to be married into more sedate company. Henry Lazar, the local blacksmith and the boy Valerie’s mother picks out, is a well meaning young man with a hefty purse but a complete aversion for confrontation. And, of course, this isn’t the bad-boy loving Valerie’s cup of mead.
The wolf in the tale looms large over the village of Daggorhorn well before it makes its appearance. This isn’t just any ordinary animal; it is a creature of the night – a werewolf. In the opening scenes as a young Valerie skips along to gather water we see the town prepare for the full moon, leaving livestock gifts and markers everywhere to stay inside. Nearly every viewer who is above three has heard the tale of Red Riding Hood before and we immediately realize that the sense of foreboding is because of the wolf. And yet one of the first distinctive dialogs we hear is the voice of a father cautioning his daughter about the animal. This is the first inkling we get of the lack of subtlety that pervades this film. Hardwicke fashions a club with her subtexts to beat us over the head with. Be it Valerie’s burden of beauty or the blacksmith’s timidity nearly everything is spelt out in dialog leaving barely anything to the inferring powers of the audience.
One of the marginally subtler themes running through the film is Juvenal’s question of “Quis Custodiet ipsos custodies?”. Daggorhorn’s pastor, Auguste, believes that the town will be delivered from its nemesis by Father Solomon, a half priest half avenging angel who travels through the land killing werewolves. Played rather formulaically by the usually stellar Gary Oldman, the character of Solomon is a sketch in dichotomy. While he protects from his own daughters the identity of their dead werewolf mother, he is more than happy to invade the privacy of the townsfolk in the interest of ‘greater good’. He even has the town people divided and tattling on each other to protect selfish interests without ultimately performing the task he was appointed for. As these events unfold on screen we are reminded that an age of cell phone taps may be a slippery slope away from an age of inhuman sentences. And given the conclusion Hardwicke leaves us with we are even prompted to ponder what the ‘greater good’ is.
But this small germ of topical relevance is insufficient to distract us from the hodge-podge presentation and the largely insipid performances of the male leads. Even the attempts at intelligent self-references - like dream tête-à-tête Valerie has with her grandmother or the bacchanalian recreation of the tale of the three little pigs – fall flat. The saving graces of the film are the performances of Amanda Seyfried, Julie Christie and the director’s original strength – production design. I would not be surprised if it was discovered that Christie made a deal with Mephistopheles (or a skilled surgeon) to ensure that she looked this radiant after seven decades on this planet. The icy tundra of Daggorhorn and its surrounding coniferous forests are perpetually plunged in some sort of twilight. Every house in the village and even the trees in the forest seem to be fashioned for protection from the beast. But these details are just icing and icing alone does not a delicious cake make. The tonal quality achieved by Hardwicke’s milieu is let down by the inconsistency in the content. This results in a film that is largely unsure of what it is and a rather uneven viewing experience.
P.S: An edited version appears in the New Indian Express today. Link here.
