I’ve Got A Tower
Posted on | March 11, 2006 at 10:36 pm | 1 Comment
I just watched the DVD of the movie Mirrormask, which while not outstanding in the story department, is a fabulous piece of eye candy. It was directed by artist Dave McKean and is very much his artwork brought to life. The story was co-written by Dave and acclaimed fantasy author Neil Gaiman, who have frequently collaborated in the past, mostly on graphic novels (and perhaps most famously on Gaiman’s Sandman comic book series, for which McKean did the covers). The story, which is a cross between The Wizard of Oz, The Prince and the Pauper, and a Miyazaki animated movie, is about a young teenage girl whose parents run a circus. When her mother gets sick with some unspecified illness, the girl somehow ends up in a dreamworld that is having a bit of a conflict between its light side and shadow side. The girl is mistaken for a princess of the dark side, and must defeat the evil queen while finding the titular item that will restore balance to this world. I kinda saw the whole thing as a parable about trying to hang onto your childhood, but then again, I see most things that way.
The young girl is played by Stephanie Leonidas (love that name) who is a very expressive and appealing actress with a bright future. She reminds me of a young Helena Bonham Carter (reinforced in my mind by the fact that her character’s name is Helena). Although she does spend most of the movie with strands of hair covering half her face, which kept creepily reminding me of the ghostly girl from The Ring movies. She definitely has to carry the movie, as she is in nearly every scene.
But the major draw of the flick is the visual style. I knew that Dave McKean (who, prior to this, had directed some short films and music videos) would do wonders with the scenes set in the other world, but I found myself also drawn to the parts of the movie set in the real world. He’s got a sharp eye for interesting camera angles and for making even dreary looking everyday buildings and landscapes look otherworldly. The cinematography was amazing.
I was quite impressed with what they were able to do with a small budget. The movie was produced by the Henson Company (The House The Muppets Built) and somewhat follows in that studio’s tradition of family fantasy fare such as Labyrinth. They didn’t have a lot of money, but all of it went up there on the screen. In one of the DVD extras, McKean says that they intentionally wanted the visual effects to have something of a flat style, so that they would look more like his drawings come to life. (Helena is a budding artist, and the dreamworld she ends up in is based on the drawings that fill up the walls of her bedroom.) In a way, I think having the smaller budget enabled them to achieve the look that McKean wanted. And it’s really hard to explain that look – you just have to see it. Texture and color are just as important as any other element, such as movement, light and shadow. There are many computer animated creatures who are not nearly as detailed as ones you would find in something like Narnia, but it works because they are supposed to be crude and they’re not supposed to be photorealistic or resemble real creatures. Many, such as the monkeybirds, are mashups of existing creatures.
MirrorMask is a beautiful film that kept me fascinated and anticipating what wonders were just around the corner. I can forgive the somewhat pedestrian fantasy story, because it fit the look of the film, which was so pretty to look at. I contrast it with something like the Robin Williams movie What Dreams May Come, which was also very pretty to look at, but which had a complicated (and kinda stupid) psychological story that really detracted from any wonder one could derive from the visuals.
I look forward to seeing what McKean does next, and I hope someone lets him do it.
Latre.
Comments
One Response to “I’ve Got A Tower”
March 13th, 2006 @ 9:13 am
Hey, Flasshe, that is indeed funny that we were both watching this at the same time and chose to write about it–basically I agree with everything you said, right down to thinking that the young actress could be HBC’s younger sister.
I am surprised that this didn’t garner more attention when it was released…it is one of the most beautiful-looking films in recent memory.