Streep sings the song for all it's worth, making about as persuasive case as one can for the epiphanies tucked within. But catchy melody and dramatic impact aside -- at least in the moments the singer is performing it -- what is the song's worth? The song continues to baffle me, my confusion is very much tied to the points you carefully parse.
The Witch is powerless, trying to survive, wanting to hand over Jack. Then as they hurl accusations at one another about the source of the devastation, to nail ultimate responsibility, she quiets them and tells them not only what's wrong with their thinking but why she exists in their lives and even in the story ("I'm the witch, I'm the hitch," etc.) She isn't more personally threatened by the immediate events than she was, say 20 minutes ago, yet out of the blue calls on her mother, fate, the Gods, someone, to rescue her -- or kill her? If the ground swallows her -- and she fell through the floor on B'way -- where the hell, literally, does she go? And why then? Is this the only solution to flee the Giant -- suicide? If it's the last midnight, the llth hour in the escalating catastrophe, why is her only option ... death? Or spiritual transformation to the underworld?
The film offers no new insights, and the effects that engulf the Streep Witch more or less obfuscate the story point. We're too awed by the tornado of dirt that eats our star alive, we don't ponder where she is (where she can still sing "Children Will Listen.") I'd love to hear a director explain the sequence to an actor playing the Witch, to simply articulate what the pragmatic goal of the song is. What its action is. I can of course make suppositions and speculations. But nothing I come up with necessarily explains what takes place before us on stage or screen.
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