Mirrormask Review

[McMurphy]

There is a generation of adults now embarking on new oh-too-down-to-earth adventures in life. They see their friends and family marry each other off, they are paying their first mortgages on their first houses, and they fret over how well their first borns will fit in with the rest of the preschool class. The childhood, while still glimmering back in their minds perhaps only in dreams tortured by the eternal struggle between the alarm clock and its snooze button, has long since passed.

And what an unique childhood it was. Before the generation's alarm clock conquest, they had front row seats to bear witness to the struggle of the last giants in children folklore in attempt to resist the youthful and sweet energy of the children entertainment of the likes of "Masters of the Universe," "Thundercats," "SMURFS," and whatever other toy commercials guised as Saturday morning programming marketers could think of. By the time said generation was sneaking out of their bedroom windows to a classmate's drinking party, Disney had successfully bought up the rights to anything artistically legitimate and campaigned an agenda to convince the following generation that The Neverending Story would have been better told if Robin Williams was voicing Falkor. The Dark Crystals and the Labyrinths are laying down their enchantments to make way for Mickey Mouse's wizard wand and his apprentice named Pixar.

Or have they?

It would seem that Jim Henson Company Production has yet to admit defeat in delivering children truly artistic entertainment with its new release, Mirrormask.

Mirrormask is the apex result of the long time collaboration between Neil Gaiman (author of the Sandman graphic novels, the multi-award winning novel American Gods, and a handful of well received children's books) and Dave McKean (illustrator, musician, writer, photographer...a true art Renaissance Man of both digital and traditional crafts). These two creative minds have already collaborated on Violent Cases, Black Orchid, Sandman, The Day I Swapped My Dad for Two Goldfish, The Wolves in the Walls, and Coraline. It is about time that audiences can sit down in a dark theater and see their brilliance dance before them.

The film, written by Neil Gaiman and directed by Dave McKean, centers around a girl named Helena, who is tired of being raised within the traveling circus that her parents own. She is sick to death of the surreal life under the big top and wishes to lead a normal life with normal problems. If she isn't escaping the demands of juggling by making sock puppets, she is retiring to her first love: drawing. Helena's frustration takes an ugly yet classic adolescent turn when she wished her mother dead. As all children's stories are fond to remind us, be careful for what you wish for. You just might get it.

Helena's wish certainly appears to be on its way to be granted when her mother falls deathly sick from cancer and is hospitalized with a series of not-too-promising operations awaiting her. Helena's escape to drawing heightens until soon her guilt is camouflaged by a bedroom covered by 5 X 7 ink fantasies. One night, while she is searching for her father, she stumbles upon a dark circus act being performed amongst the exterior hallways of the run down apartment complex she has been forced to call home due to the circus closing. Before she knows it, she is escaping with one of the masked performers from a black muck that is covering everything and everyone in its path. An ordinary door opens into a strange world more demented than anything written about Alice's bright Wonderland, and Helena's quest to save her mother begins.

That is only the very surface level of Gaiman's story. It becomes quite clear that her quest (whether dreamt, metaphorical, vividly real, or a love child of all three) is about much more than saving her mother. Through the artistic motifs of McKean and the symbolism put forth by Gaiman, this is a story really about a girl going through the archetypal rites of passage into a teenage adolescent bucking to have an identity utterly separate from that of her mother's. Helena's escape in doodling is akin to Sarah's play acting in The Labyrinth. It needs to stop. Puberty beckons.

In the sense that the story is really about a girl transcending into the first steps of becoming a woman, Mirrormask more than mirrors The Labyrinth. Even aspects such as riddle challenges, columns of locks with only one right key, warped versions of Earth's animals, dark puppeteering, slow speaking oracles, and dark queens will have audiences recalling their love of The Neverending Story and The Labyrinth. Because of this similarity, it is obvious why Jim Henson Company Production chose this project.

Dave McKean's vision is what shatters any belief that Mirrormask can be categorized as some sort of Dark Crystal homage. Often immensely surreal and sometimes utterly abstract, the images he puts on screen through just about every method an artist can think of are simply amazing. There is absolutely no way that a viewer can hope to digest everything (s)he sees in a single viewing. The film begs to brought home and watched a dozen times. Gaiman's tradition of tossing in symbolic motifs and allusions to mythology and folklore like a deranged chef pepper happy, which is present in all of his more sophisticated works, can leave a person scratching his/her head with the sneaking suspicion that a few concepts have just sailed right over it. The mixture of these two high brow visions offers an experience for viewers that they will not soon forget.

Because of these complex elements of Mirrormask, a few weaknesses arise, and it is up to every viewer to determine just how much that will factor into their experience. For one, a viewer's possible connection with the characters suffer. Helena is our guiding light---our grounding character that we must cling onto, but her supporting cast can often be overshadowed by the demented magic of the mirror world. Valentine, her companion who will ultimately play into an aspect of the adolescent transformation for girls, is surprisingly uninspired. Too often it feels like he is the run-of-the-mill comic relief character, although it never becomes unbearable. Second, Mirrormask's ability to reach a children's audience is called into question. The first act of the film might drag a little too slow for children, and the confusing imaginary may leave kids disinterested. The film is not the most accessible piece of art for even adults.

It is on that note that brings readers back to the original points of this review. The film is the polar opposite of the highly commercial fluff that dominate the attention of this generation of children, and cannot be ignored. It is so to such a degree that Mirrormask may be more of a film to the generation who wishes to return to some of the more fantastic realms of their own childhood. Long live Falkor.

Review Grade: A-