Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (2001) – DVD

***/**** Image A Sound A Extras C
starring Matthew Modine, Vanessa Redgrave, Mia Sara, Daryl Hannah
teleplay by James V. Hart and Brian Henson & Bill Barretta
directed by Brian Henson

by Walter Chaw Visually fascinating and texturally dark, Jim Henson Studios’ Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story (henceforth Jack and the Beanstalk), directed by Henson heir Brian, is a hallucinogenic take on the tale of Jack the Giant Killer that posits Jack as a liar and a thief–the bad guy. Set in modern times with a descendant of the legendary Jack (also named Jack (Matthew Modine)) being the head of a large multinational corporation (shades of co-writer James V. Hart’s Hook), Jack and the Beanstalk presents an occasionally captivating point of view that mythologizes big-business malfeasance as it manifests through environmental atrocity and unchecked expansion. It suggests that Jack’s theft of the goose that laid the golden eggs and the singing harp results in 374 days of famine for the denizens of the giant’s world–and that the giant Thunderdell (Bill Barretta) was in fact a beneficent and much-loved keeper of his people.

In this, we can trace the hint of a Romanticist struggle between industry and nature–a suggestion that is at least temporally correct in that the earliest source of the “Jack and the Bean Tree” myth appears to be an 1860 Australian chapbook. Taking a page from Washington Irving (and a Chinese myth called the “Medicine Hooloo”), there is a temporal shift in that a day in the giant’s world is equivalent to a day in the human one. While certainly convenient for a film that wants at least part of its action to be set in the twentieth century, the time anomaly furthers an idea of a gulf between a prelapsarian timeline and the far less geological scale of the industrial age. It’s not even too far a reach to mention the role of exploration (for what is much of this myth but a tale of discovering treasures in a new world?) in the invention of a portable time-keeping device.

Originally a mini-series broadcast over two nights on CBS, Jack and the Beanstalk runs an unwieldy three-plus hours but nonetheless maintains an admirable level of interest. Helping is the presence of Vanessa Redgrave as Jack’s mysterious aunt and Jon Voight, who dons a hilariously campy “Col. Klink” accent as a benefactor with a secret agenda, though the bulk of the film’s success rests with Mia Sara’s haunted performance as Ondine (a strange emissary from the shadow kingdom) and Henson’s atmospheric and dreamy direction. Although the budget restrictions are obvious in the occasional clumsiness of its CGI work and background mattes, there’s an undeniable storybook flavour to the enterprise that forgives, if not explains, its artificiality. One scene of Jack pausing during a thunderstorm in his days-long climb of the magical beanstalk to take shelter in a giant bean pod and feast on a gargantuan pea is at once beautiful, haunting, and ineffably melancholy. If anything, Jack and the Beanstalk is an example of what Wordsworth would have called “the story of place.”

There’s a great deal of opportunity in this film for scholarly approaches: the choices the picture makes are that worthy of note. With an interesting courtroom sequence presided over by a council of giants representing the world’s religions (led by a stately Richard Attenborough), an absorbing exploration tackling the implications of the sins of the fathers, and an overriding feeling of a hard-to-peg “wrongness,” Jack and the Beanstalk is a gratifyingly mature fantasy buoyed by its script and performances. It’s the sort of film that bespeaks respect for its audience–the kind of deference all too rare in today’s television wasteland.

THE DVD
Artisan and Hallmark Home Entertainment release Jack and the Beanstalk: The Real Story in a fairly comprehensive DVD package. Presented in its original aspect of 1.33:1, the telefilm’s anamorphic transfer is luminous and verdant, its luxurious greens standing in stark and effective contrast to the blighted “giant land,” which is shot in a cool blue suffusion. There is no evidence of edge enhancement or digital artifacting. The Dolby Digital 5.1 soundmix (there is also a 2.0 surround option) makes good use of all channels. The booming echo of the giants’ voices, especially, as well as the early chapter demise of Thunderdell, fills the sound environment with a hearty reverberation worth relishing for its organ-shifting vigour.

An eight-and-a-half minute “behind the scenes” featurette is essentially a redundant plot synopsis of the film delivered in turn by Henson, Modine, and clips from the film. More interesting is a seven-minute “Henson Creature Shop” docu that talks about the prosthetic and animatronic creations on display in the production. Insight into creature manipulation, unforeseen problems, and the surprise benefits of greenscreen makes for an illustrative few minutes. Rounding out the disc is a 32-page “Production Notes” feature that plays a good deal like a press kit for the film. It includes a somewhat rote detailing of the story, characters, and F/X.

184 minutes; NR; 1.33:1; English DD 5.1, English Dolby Surround; CC; DVD-9; Region One; Artisan