Just Like A Dream. Too Much Like One, In Fact.

It’s a strange thing how supposedly “irrelevant” artists in other fields such as comics are actually getting more and more prominence as Hollywood looks for more areas to mine in its ceaseless, never ending appetite for new properties to present on the screen. However, the genesis of Mirrormask is probably one of the happier circumstances as it’s not exactly a voracious Hollywood meat-grinder that came across Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean so much as the strangely comforting, felt covered embraced of the Muppet Factory, The Jim Henson Company.

But I think it’s a good thing–which of course is rife with the potential for abuse, just look at any video game based movie by Uwe Bolle to see what I mean–although I think it’s pretty clear that what there’s a reason most people aren’t Leonardo DaVinci; it’s extremely difficult to be that good at so many things, even when they’re interrelated.

That’s what I thought when I watched Mirrormask which is original and engaging in many, many ways, but trips up somewhat at the fundamental level of narrative in film. It is, all things considered, an amazing first effort by Dave McKean as director who up until this point had only directed his short films, so the fact that it comes off as enjoyable but flawed speaks much of his potential as a director; if he did this well when he was basically clueless and learning the ropes, his work will be much more powerful as he becomes an assured hand at it.

The visuals themselves… well, there’s no getting around it, this is like wandering around inside the cover of an issue of The Sandman. It’s a pretty safe bet that viewers will see things they have never seen or imagined every three minutes. The originality of McKean’s vision shines through and through. The same holds true to a lesser degree for the narrative, written of course, by Neil-O. For people who follow his writing faithfully, the are a few Neil-isms to be recognized here and there, but writing for film is a different beast from writing for comics or novels and I think the inexperience of Neil-O in this area shows somewhat.

There are many parallels between this and the Henson’s other famous “girl in another world” film, Labyrinth; both films feature a troubled girl, uncomfortable with her life and “normal” world, wishing to escape it, and, by thoughtlessly uttering a phrase, placing a loved in a peril that necessitates traveling to another world largely composed of objects familiar to the girl blown up into strange, dreamlike context, from which she learns more about herself and lessons about life even as she undertakes her quest with friends that end up betraying her and then redeeming themselves.

However, the predecessor, Labyrinth though no match for Mirrormask in the visuals department, edges it out slightly in terms of structure and pace. I think the chief problem for me is that although both Labyrinth and Mirrormask have “vignette” events–strange, unexpected situations and characters the show how off kilter the world is–Mirrormask seems almost too random in its events. It’s an odd thing to say, because while in both movies these random events do push the story forward, Labyrinth’s strangeness feels more organic, more natural, and the consequences that result from those encounters also feel logical within the context of the story. Mirrormask on the other hand seems to occasionally feel like the incredible sights and characters were thought of for their own sake, and then had narrative devices cobbled onto them to justify their existence in the film. It also feels sometimes like there’s much more to the film that we’re not seeing. The film flows for the most part, but occasionally, the cuts between events feels as if we’ve missed something as if in the journey from point A to B, there was an event we might have benefitted from that we missed out on.

In the end it almost feels as if Neil-O had gone a bit too overboard on the dream logic in the narrative and presented a series of events that, like a dream, dont’ necessarily connect to each other in a smooth and meaningful way, but when you’re talking a movie, especially one for children of all ages, that arbitrary, unexplained nature of dream events doesn’t always carry over so well.

Still, the performances were good, with not a single bad actor in the lot, though I hesitate to say that anyone was really amazing. The character of Valentine stole the show, though if I would have to pick out anyone/thing as a favorite, it would have to be Sphinxes and Griffens. All the winged, cat-like creatures with human faces were some of the most unsettling things I’ve seen in years, and the fact that they had varying levels of speaking ability made them that much creepier.