Live-Action Bambi Movie Coming From Director Sarah Polley (Yes, Really)
When Sarah Polley won her richly deserved Best Adapted Screenplay Oscar for "Women Talking," it was sweet vindication for a tremendously talented artist who hadn't been able to get a film made in 10 years. Even though her first three movies as a director — "Away from Her," "Take This Waltz" and the deeply personal documentary "Stories We Tell" — received mostly rapturous reviews, Polley, for a variety of reasons, struggled to build on her early successes. Having survived the tumultuous production of Terry Gilliam's "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" as a child, and weathered multiple indignities as an actor throughout the 1990s and 2000s (some of which are documented in her essay collection "Run Towards the Danger"), it feels like Polley has earned more than a few breaks going forward.
Getting tapped by Disney to direct a "live-action" version of "Bambi" is certainly a big deal, one that will almost certainly be the biggest box office hit of her career to date. But this is another dispiriting example of a unique artist being asked to play within the limiting four-quadrant parameters of the world's preeminent supplier of innocuous entertainment. With Barry Jenkins currently banging away at a "Lion King" prequel and Questlove prepping "The Aristocats," it's hard not to lament the state of an industry that once allowed geniuses like Spike Lee and Jane Campion the opportunity to apply their distinctive style to risky material like "School Daze" or "In the Cut".
Is there any chance a Polley-directed "Bambi" could turn out to be a transcendent work of art?
Why mess with beautiful, brutal perfection?
Deadline's exclusive on Polley being in talks to helm "Bambi" doesn't offer much in the way of details. It's unknown if screenwriters Geneva Robertson-Dworet and Lindsey Beer are still attached (obviously, no one's getting hired right now in the midst of the WGA strike). Though they have fairly brief resumes, their credits are pretty underwhelming (Robertson-Dworet wrote the "Tomb Raider" remake and "Captain Marvel," while Beer directed the unreleased "Pet Sematary" prequel and is working on a "Hello Kitty" movie).
Disney's run of live-action remakes has produced a couple of enjoyable movies (I enjoyed the high-camp of Bill Condon's "Beauty and the Beast" and thought David Lowery brought a smattering of soul to "Peter Pan & Wendy), but I sincerely doubt Polley, or anyone, can match the heartbreak and terror of the 1942 masterpiece (which David Cronenberg believes is one of the most frightening movies ever made).
It's still the earliest of days on nü-"Bambi," but it feels like there's a quality cap on these movies. I'd much rather have Polley calling her tune, but it just doesn't work like that in Hollywood anymore, and that's bad for everyone but the suits and shareholders.