A few weeks ago, a friend of mine had the privilege of seeing an early screening of Wicked, with stars Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande, director Jon M. Chu, and others associated with the production in attendance. My trusted spy reported that the movie was monumental, staggering, and earthshaking (my adjectives applied retroactively here but basically my friend’s sentiment, more or less). This friend also made a point to mention that the post-screening Q&A was a highlight. Cynthia apparently spoke at great length about the role her inner child had played in her work for the film and anyone who has at all encountered the lightning rod press tour for the film is likely familiar with the tenor of the kind of emotionally bare discourse that the release of this film has provoked.

Paul Schrader once said of the incredulous response to his film The Canyons that it’s more important to review a film itself than to review the broader response to a film. I agree with this principle and generally try to follow it in my criticism, yet there are times when works simply feel too personal to have any kind of objectivity. Wicked is, I suspect, one such case.

Adapted from Gregory Maguire’s novel of the same name, Wicked the musical first took flight on Broadway in 2003, opening to immediate success, quickly becoming a beloved modern classic. The musical, a dark, revisionist prequel to The Wizard of Oz, tells the magical story of a young woman who, having been curiously green since birth, grows up to become the much-maligned Wicked Witch of the West. Yet, it must be stressed that Wicked isn’t just another run-of-the-mill villain origin story, nor is it just another Broadway adaptation. For so many, Wicked is simply a fact of life, as ordinary and ever-present as the sun or moon in the sky, having provided orientation and illumination amid the darkness. Wicked is astonishingly broad in its reach and confoundingly personal in its impact, a Rorschach blot for whatever connections to your childhood trauma you can map out onto the expansive story.

So, if you'll understand that to think about or much less write about Wicked is basically to stare into the white-hot sun of my entire life (no drama), I hope you’ll indulge me as I partake in a grand tradition set by all those who have been associated with Wicked since its inception, including but not limited to: Cynthia Erivo, Ariana Grande, Idina Menzel, Kristin Chenoweth, Stephen Schwartz, Universal Pictures, every single brand that did a Wicked promo line, Kurt Hummel, Rachel Berry, invariably someone in any musical theater voice class, my adult cousin who reposted an infographic about why Wicked matters onto her Instagram story, and countless more the globe across: I’m going to make this all about me.

One of the more inspired stage-to-screen embellishments Chu has to his film of Wicked comes during the climactic crowdpleaser “Defying Gravity.” As our green-skinned heroine Elphaba falls from atop the Wizard’s tower, perhaps to her death, she comes face to face for a few precious moments with her inner child, who stares back from the reflection of the glass. Though years have passed for Elphaba since her childhood days (and nearly 2 and a half hours for the audience), that little green child who had for so long been abused, neglected, shamed, and outcast, appears in the moment of greatest danger. Needless to say, it is only through honoring this inner child, acknowledging her trauma, feeling her emotions instead of judging them, and all other kinds of feel-good, self-help aphorisms that sometimes are annoying to hear but which are ultimately true, Elphaba is finally able to take to the skies. It’s a pretty tight metaphor, right? Throughout my life, Wicked has been there to remind me that making the distinctly unpopular choice to walk down the yellow brick road or take to the skies on a broomstick or dance even when everyone else is laughing is the bravest, best thing you can do for yourself.

One of the most beautiful or infuriating things about musical theater performance is that unchecked ego, need for attention, dearth of self love, and mortifying insecurity are not necessarily barriers to incredible performances. Neither are deep empathy, radical forgiveness, community-minded thinking, and consistent patterns of reckless behavior. To care about Wicked, you probably have more than a couple of these traits.

Think about Wicked for even a second too long and you may find yourself lost in a kaleidoscopic funhouse refraction of yourself and all those you've known. Maybe it also feels like you’re the casting director and you need to cast all the roles of your life with the perfect heroes, villains, sidekicks, and ensemble to achieve the perfect overarching grand life narrative that your inner child needs to get over whatever it was that happened to you when you were a child. In this or that friendship, was I the noble, inspiring Elphaba who remained true to myself in this or rather the enterprising, vain Glinda who needed to learn a lesson about my own privilege and place in the world? Was that one boy who I cared so much about but with whom things didn’t quite work out a noble Fiyero who I judged unfairly just because of my own trauma or was he just another flying monkey getting in the way? Were the other kids at school small-minded Munchkins and I the unfairly persecuted minority with something about me that was different but which wasn’t my fault or did we all just think we were Elphaba and were just too caught up in ourselves to take a second for anyone else’s problems? These are the kinds of philosophically complex, morally gray (morally green?) questions that Wicked provokes.

At intervals and throughout, Wicked touches on justice, abuse, estrangement, complicity, corruption, narcissism, deception, lies, vanity, fascism, colorism, rivalry, regret, reparations, “other-ing,” and innumerable other topics. Despite its fantastical conceit and family friendly appeal (the film is rated PG), I would say that for its philosophical ambition, Wicked is a seminal text on the human condition, as much in the literary intellectual tradition of, say, Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem” or Herman Hesse’s “Siddartha,” as in the tradition of the mega-budget, tentpole Hollywood film. What are the features of the relationship between the individual and the group in a multisectarian society? Does the functioning of the state require violence and, if so, can individual actors resist or mitigate state violence? Who is considered a “terrorist?” If these at all sound like questions to which you’d like to know the answers, I’ve got just the movie for you (plus a second installment coming out Q4 next year.)

Like the widely reviled musical theater genre, Wicked the film could be easily mocked. Granted, the film, while beautifully realized, is not perfect, but the things we grab onto in the moments in which we need support so seldom are. You take the hat or the hand or the wand or the broomstick that’s given to you and you try to make a little magic. With this ultra-glossy, ultra-budgeted production, I might be getting duped into buying into a sanitized, corporatized, capitalist vision of entertainment that is also being used to sell Starbucks drinks and handbags, but you also might say that any negative reaction anyone might have to Wicked could be tantamount to disrespect of the inner child because of the essential role this story has played in the formative moments of so many lives. Emotional response and objective quality are as easily mistaken as goodness and luck or wickedness and misfortune. If you want the cut and dry last word from me and go for binaries, Wicked is a “thumbs-up.” If you care more for qualitative descriptions of works of art drawn from emotional responses and affect, Wicked is a resounding “OOOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHHHHHH.” Lots of songs get stuck in your head, but some of them stay forever.