especially when he is getting another gothy child-woman to utter mysterious but whimsical comments.
I may be gothy, and possibly a youngster, but I'm not a woman. Just wanted to make that clear.
So, you have apologised for telling us that the only argument for not coming at the very thought of a whimsy-whimsy double whimsy whammy is some sort of panic at the depth of our feelings for Noel
Yes. Because I hate saying shit like that but it seemed like it might be an effective tool. That is, most of the respondents were being snarky and mismatching so I wildly overexaggerated snarky to see if anyone might get civilized in response.
So, you believe, objectively, that Mirrormask is perfect?
No. I believe that objectivity has limited utility in critiquing art and film, and that utility, limited though it be, is certainly not served by dismissing out of hand everything which might be described as whimsical or dark by those poor fools with no other vocabulary with which to describe something they are, at present, excited about. Not liking things which can be described as whimsical is certainly valid, but it's not objective; therefore my comment.
I hope very much that someone with a head for critiquing film does offer a review of MirrorMask in this thread; that would fulfill my purpose in starting it (besides to gush about something I was excited about, and my evident masochistic tendencies in ever, ever talking about something I just simply LIKE on 'lith).
Okay. Here's what I thought was effective about the movie.
I actually liked that the plot was really simple and we'd seen it all before. It's a fairytale. All fairytales are basically alike. Since the point of the movie is for it to be a fairytale, I couldn't expect any radical departures from the hero quest/vision theme. It also gets Neil neatly out of the way so the artists can work-- if he'd tried to do anything original it would have left more Gaimanism all over.
The lead is pretty good. I think the actor is convincing in portraying the character exactly as she is meant to be portrayed. (If you despise the "child-woman" portion as much as the "gothy", you'll probably hate her, so nevermind all this. She's a female teenager, which I think is the definition of child-woman.) She is much less hateable than that brat in Labyrinth, that's for damn sure. The acting in general departs from realism, of course, while the action takes place in the dream-world. I didn't have a problem with this; it didn't interrupt the experience for me.
McKean's visuals are, of course, what sold me. It is most likely do to my inexperience, but on first watching I couldn't tell what was his animation and what was puppetry. Of course, it didn't occur to me to look. The animation blends seamlessly with the actual footage, more so than his usual photomanipulation work-- thank the hordes of animators for that, probably.
I found the script to be pretty good. The dialogue that is supposed to be believable is believable, and the dialogue that is supposed to be surreal is appropriately surreal.
What I thought was ineffective:
I don't like the uncritical use of duality. I realize that Gaiman's use of this trope is meant to represent it AS a trope; I still think he could have done more with that.
The characters in the dream world are archetypes. Again. They're supposed to be. But the one character who is supposed to depart from the archetype isn't really; he's acting out a different archetype. There's probably a point to that, though.
One of the characters at one point sees a future action of his and its consequences. Later, he departs from that action as a result of having seen its consequences. This happens in a split second. I was about to say I'd rather have seen this slightly more obvious, but then I realized I wouldn't. Forget that last thing then.
The reason why I was suggesting that this movie is all about McKean is because I think he put more work into it than Gaiman did; I think Gaiman wrote himself into the background a little by making the plot a simple fairytale (which, again, is what Henson asked for) and by keeping his Gaiman flourishes to a minimum. For instance, most of the movie takes place in dreams, but never once does anyone even approximating the Endless show up. Isn't that nice to know? McKean and the animators worked for months before they had a completed shot. So, it sounds to me like McKean put more of himself into it. On the other hand, McKean had animators.
How is it different than Labyrinth? All the acting was shit in Labyrinth, and the main character was written as a grotesque parody of teenagerhood. The story in Labyrinth is one of "childlike fantasy-living girl goes into fantasy world and learns fantasy sucks, decides to be a proper adult female homemaker for rest of life." The story in MirrorMask is "girl stuck living someone else's fantasy hates it and enters a more fantastical world, decides real-world fantasy isn't so bad." There's no relationship between Labyrinth's Sarah and her family explored at all; MirrorMask is all about that exploration.
I think that's all I have to say for the minute, which is probably a relief to everyone. |
