Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I saw this film about a week and a half ago, on an exceptionally dark and rainy night in Los Angeles. Driving to the CAA building was like being in a submarine. I was sick, hopped up on Nyquil, so everything felt vaguely dreamy anyway, with the weather only magnifying the effect.
Truth be told, that may be the perfect way to enjoy this strange, surreal little fantasy film, a bold and stylish fairy tale doodle that represents yet another triumph in the ongoing artistic collaboration between Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean.
I discovered SANDMAN while I was a freshman in college. That was a glorious year for me and graphic novels. It was also the same year I read Alan Moore’s WATCHMEN for the first time. I was still just getting back into reading comics after taking some time off. I tried out a number of titles and authors, and there was no real rhyme or reason to what I was reading. Often, it was as simple as liking a cover. That was certainly what spurred me to pick up whichever of the SANDMAN collections it was that served as my gateway drug to all things Gaiman. “A Doll’s House,” I believe. Dave McKean’s moody, abstract cover may not have been the same as the art that was inside, but it was a perfect emotional match for what Gaiman wrote.
I can understand why the two of them would want to work together on a film. It’s something new and exciting, a media they haven’t jointly conquered yet. When I first heard mention of MIRRORMASK a few years ago, someone described it to me as “an unofficial sequel to LABYRINTH.” It’s not, but it certainly shares ideas and themes with that film, as well as others like TIME BANDITS and THE WIZARD OF OZ. This is a pretty familiar story shape. A young person, experiencing personal problems in his or her life, falls into a troubling, surreal dreamscape of people and places they sort of recognize before finally waking back to a new clarity about everything. Simple enough.
What makes this type of story work (or not) are the particular details used to flesh things out. In this case, Gaiman’s wit is perfectly complimented by McKean’s truly unique visual style, a remarkable translation of his paintings into something like flesh and blood. There’s a quiet revolution underway right now with films like Rodriguez & Miller’s SIN CITY or Conran’s SKY CAPTAIN and this film. These are movies that could only exist in the digital age, wholecloth fabrications of complex worlds that don’t even try to replicate reality. People who are still talking about the “photoreal” have missed the point. MIRRORMASK is almost completely impressionistic, even during the early scenes set in the “real” world. I have no idea what McKean would do with a more conventional type of film, but he’s stone-cold perfect for this material.
The best thing that happened to McKean as a director was the casting of Stephanie Leonidas as Helena, the film’s lead. Like Jennifer Connelly in LABYRINTH, Leonidas is a confounding mix of overripe innocence and sensual charisma. It’s impossible to pinpoint just how young or old she is, which seems to be the point. Helena is just old enough to be embarrassed and irritated by her role in the family circus. It’s something her mother (Gina McKee) and father (Rob Brydon) both love. It’s in their blood. And it’s something that Helena just barely tolerates. One night, she has a huge fights with her mother just before the show, and in an ill-considered moment of childish petulance, she tells her mom that she wishes she would die. During the performance, a mystery ailment cuts her mother down. Helena’s immediately plunged into a series of frightening hospital visits and overheard conversations about the dissolution of the circus. Helena knows it’s all her fault, and the guilt starts to eat her up. One night, she falls into a fitful sleep, and when she wakes up, all the rules of reality seem to have changed around her in classic Wonderland fashion.
She finds herself in a world where everyone wears a mask, where books float through the air as ably as fish, and where darkness and light perpetually wrestle for territory. A world where a woman who looks just like her mother hovers on the line between life and death, sleeping, with no one able to wake her. A world in which Helena seems to be the only one able to fix what’s gone so terribly, terribly wrong.
As is many fantasies of this type, there are doubles here for any number of familiar faces, worn now by strangers. What Helena doesn’t realize is that she has a double of her own who arranged the switch, one world for another, a double who is perfectly happy to live the life that Helena’s so dissatisfied with. Helena ends up with a companion on her journey, Valentine (Jason Barry), an enigmatic figure of somewhat questionable character, and their interplay is the heart of the film. It’s a hard role for Barry because his face is hidden for much of the film, except for a memorable and hilarious look at who he is in the “real” world. He and Leonidas have an easy charm together, even when Valentine’s stabbing her in the back.
Make no mistake... MIRRORMASK is a small film, an experimental film. This isn’t a broad, obvious movie. There’s a real delicacy to the film, an ethereal quality, and it feels very personal. The film lulls you, like a painting that only gradually shifts from one lush landscape to the next. I like the fact that this was made by a group of artists who don’t have dozens and dozens of films to their names. Iain Bellamy, who wrote the score... Tony Shearn, the cinematographer... the exceptional visual effects animation team... they’re all relatively unproven, and it feels like they invested their all into this film. The results are beautiful and otherworldly. I think it’s entirely appropriate that Lisa Henson is one of the producers of the film, and that her father’s name is on the film. Jim Henson followed his heart and his conscience like few people who have ever navigated the minefield of mainstream success. He made projects he was passionate about. That’s what made his films and his TV shows so effective and enduring. If you loved LABYRINTH or, even more so, THE STORYTELLER, then it’s fair to assume that you’ll feel the same way about this special film.
I’ve got a lot more to share with you all weekend long, and I think Warner Bros. is getting ready to lift the embargo on my FOUNTAIN set visit. I hope so. I’ll be back later today with a look at MAIL ORDER WIFE, a great little black comedy opening in NY and LA this weekend, and I’ve got a great big slice of DVD SHELF set for this weekend, ASAP. Until then...
"Moriarty" out.
