Máscara da Ilusão

It's impossible to deny that we live in the age of McMovies, where 95% of all films that are produced are either remakes, rehashes, sequels, or carbon copies of other movies (which are, most of the time, far superior). That is why when a truly cosmical event such as the planets lining up or a movie like Mirrormask is released one should really stop and pay attention. Simply put, everyone should see this movie. I am well aware that most people will hate it, but it is a monument of everything which the movie industry could be, maybe should be, and isn't: sublime, heartfelt, intimate, and utterly escapist.

I am a fan of Jim Henson. I have seen the Dark Crystal and hadn't really liked it. However, I walked out feeling that it was something I needed to see, I didn't want my time refunded as with most movies I don't genuinely enjoy.

The story of Mirrormask is about a teenage girl who works with her family at the circus. Every kid's dream, right? WRONG. She yearns for a normal life, which is the reason for much dispute between her and her mother. After one particularly nasty fight her mother falls before an illness. As she dwindles between life and death Helena, our heroine, is sent to live with an aunt and gets a taste of the life she so desperately wanted. As she tries to come to grips with all of this she falls into a dream. There she is trapped inside a magical land. The dream world is divided in two, the "light" kingdom which symbolises Helena's idealized version of things, and the "dark" kingdom, that stands for all the aspects of her life she hates. Perhaps by walking through both of them she may come to understand the real world, which lies somewhere in the middle of the two.

Like Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind did while exploring the murky depths of the human mind, Mirrormask does a sublime job of truly capturing the essence of a dream. The world that Helena walks seems to be without boundaries and undaunted by the laws of the physical world but at the same time it does operate under its own twisted logic and rules. This is where the film's top assets comes in: it's maverick and inspired art direction. Even in the real world there is a surreal edge that hovers over everything dominating our minds. But once you enter the dream world the wonder-bomb truly explodes in an orgy of CGI-madness. I think that every scene in the dream world has digital elements but it never felt overdone (I'm looking at you, Lucas). There's way too much visual flair to capture it all in one viewing, but you're not really meant to. You're meant to move through it, to be surrounded by it, and whatever you retain from your voyage will be more than enough. This pushes the envelope of the wonders that CGI can create. Many will say: it's a kid's movie driven by special effects so it can't be art. Yet art it is.

And that's right, it's a kid's movie. No matter how you cut it that is what it is. But still, it is a great movie that will be entertaining for the kids but provide something for the adults that will fly over the kid's heads. The film is an incredible analysis of the human subconscious. What makes it great is the fact that it is so intimate, everyone can identify themselves with Helena as she comes to experience the duality of her world, in a way it speaks to all of us. The actors are good, not great. But special mention must be done to the fact that most of them act their way through masks and we are still able to understand the emotions behind them.

Yet... the film is not perfect. It falls short on story. That is the one place where Mirrormask does not shine and is not original and unfortunately it is a big one. The story is a retelling of Alice in Wonderland. In addition to not being original, the plot is not exactly brilliant. The ultimate payoff is good and the voyage is a triumph of imagination, but the movement of characters from point A to point B is often without a strong motivation or flimsy reasons. And for anyone that does not bond with Helena the movie, no matter how visually original, will not work. Still, you should not stop these flaws from letting you give a chance to one of the most brave and unique movies of the 21st century.

At the end of the day Mirrormask feels like a good movie who had the potential to be a masterpiece but fell just shy of being great (allow me to clarify, 10=perfect, 9=masterpiece, 8=great, 7=good). It feels like a wondrous painting that had the misfortune of being trapped in a film, where it is still good but is weighed down by the other aspects of the medium, which ultimately muck up its glory. Nevertheless, it is a wild trip and I stand by my conviction that everyone should watch this film although most of the people won't like it. For those who will hate it: At an hour and half it's not a terribly bad waste of your time and at the end of the day you will walk away having seen a truly original piece of film the likes of which you won't likely see for many years. And for those that like it... well sweet dreams to you.

The medium of film is--like the medium of writing or other celebrated media--practically limitless in potential for fantastic creations. However, the fantasy (NOT SCI FI) genre is severely underrepresented in it. For every Lord of the Rings, we have ten attempts at The Matrix.

But what better alchemical mix to straight-up fantasy can we have than Neil Gaiman, Dave McKean, and the Henson Company? One thing Henson could do with his puppets that many others never really aspired to do was create fantasy the likes that weren't really done again, and his legacy lives on, using the enriching and creative mind of Gaiman, the celebrated British fantasy writer and comic book artist whose vivid imagination was so perfectly translated into film using practically every chemical for fantasy possible: CGI, animation, painting, set design, split-screen, superimposition, saturated colors, I even think there were moments of stop-motion animation.

The story is about a fifteen-year-old girl named Helena who works for a circus. Her creative and artistic mind keeps her busy from day to day until her mother falls ill and has to go to the hospital. Blaming it on herself for a row she had with her mother, Helena "escapes" into dreamland... or does she? I think what's really refreshing about this film is that, despite what a lot of people say about it, it's NOT that much like Alice and Wonderland. I can't help but think that, despite the fact that this film uses a lot of tropes common to the fantasy genre, it's distinct and original, something to be admired and appreciated. I don't think anything in this film really came off as that clichéd, even though it did come across as familiar. It might even be possible to say that anybody who has a real problem with it is just taking it too seriously, but that argument always goes in the wrong direction so forget about it.

One of the things I think that's important about a film like this is that it's not really a kids movie. Children could watch it, easily, and be fine with it, but it's not directed just to them. It isn't really directed at a target audience in the genre sense. It is simply fantasy for fantasy's sake, going where a lot of filmmakers seem desperate to avoid because "It's just not real enough." That's why, despite the fact that this movie has pretty obvious CGI, it doesn't matter as much as the obvious CGI in The Hulk: it's so fantastic, it helps that it doesn't seem real.

Too bad it just won't get the marketing or the attention it deserves, probably ever. That's why if it's ever considered a classic at all, it'll be a cult classic. Such seems the destination of many things that dare to be what they want and not what others want them to be.

--PolarisDiB

This is a visually mesmerizing film that takes movie fantasy into new territory. Think Alice in Wonderland meets Wizard of Oz performed by Cirque de Soleil. MirrorMask takes a comic-book approach to Good vs. Evil, with 15-year-old Helena as the protagonist who must find the MirrorMask and save the Light Kingdom.

But the story isn't nearly as important as the fantastic creatures and hallucinatory imagery that parade non-stop through Helena's fantastic journey. Director and writer (and frequent collaborators) Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman leap into the movie business with extraordinary confidence and derring-do. They are both legendary successes and have a devoted fan base from comic books (the Sandman series, for one), novels, short stories, posters, CD art, and much more.

It quickly becomes clear that MirrorMask is the creation of talented and imaginative artists completely unfettered by the bounds of traditional film-making. As a result, it is a bold departure from anything you have ever seen on the screen before. The story is simple enough and the visuals so wondrous that most children should find the movie enjoyable (unless they've become action-oriented adrenaline addicts). Yet the writing is sufficiently deep to satisfy the most thoughtful of adults.

I spoke to both McKean and Gaiman at one of the Sundance screenings and found them both polite, thoughtful and interesting. I told them that MirrorMask was the kind of movie I wanted to see again immediately. It is lovely enough to warrant a second look. And there's enough meat on the bones to go back and catch what you might have missed. The last movie I felt that way about was Memento, one of my all-time favorites.

I'm another of those who saw this at Sundance, and all the things I enjoy about Gaiman and McKean's graphic novels were on display: the quiet humor, the intelligence, the delightful weirdness, the astounding visual vocabulary. Except that in this case, the words are spoken by good actors, and all those visuals get up off their feet and move.

It's hard to describe the impact of watching a McKean painting move and talk. There might be those who quibble about the movie looking too animated, but of course that's exactly the point: to create a world and make it dance. The end result, visually at least, is like nothing you've ever seen before, and absolutely worth seeing for that reason alone.

Some of the people I talked to after the screening also loved the visuals but felt the story was a bit dull, that they had seen it all before. Well, it's true that the story does wear its influences on its sleeve--a little "Alice in Wonderland" here, a little "Time Bandits" there, a lot of "Wizard of Oz" over here, not to mention a resemblance to Gaiman's own "Coraline." But I'm just as familiar with those stories as anyone else, and the resemblances never interrupted my enjoyment of "MirrorrMask"--after all, it's what you do with a story that determines its success. And from moment to moment, there was enough innovation and cleverness, enough delight and wonder, to make the movie a positive delight.

I can imagine kids sitting in the audience with their eyes agog; and I can imagine their parents sitting next to them, just as agog for a whole different set of reasons. "MirrorMask" may or may not be too wild to be a full-out commercial success; but I predict it's going to have a long, long shelf life. I know I'll be buying the DVD as soon as it's available, so that I can show it to people and say "Wait till you see this."

Title: Mirrormask (2005)

Director: Dave McKean

Cast: Stephanie Leonidas, Gina McKee, Rob Brydon, Jason Barry, Dora Bryan

Review: Dave McKean and Neil Gaiman have partnered up in the past to write some visually astounding children's books. McKean would take care of the artwork and Gaiman would take care of the story. This time around they have joined forces to create a film that very closely resembles their previous colaborations. Only this time around, the images move and actors say the words in this way helping to bring McKeans art and Gaimans words to vibrant life.

The story in Mirrormask is about a young girl called Helena. Her parents run a circus and she has been brought up in the circus environment, but lately shes been feeling like shes not really cut up for circus life. Helena and her mother have a fight about her not wanting to be in the circus anymore and she wishes her mother would die. On that same day, her mother falls ill and ends up in the hospital and Helenas conscience begins to bother her, after all, she did wish her mother was dead. And now she is close to dying. So once Helena falls as sleep thinking about all these things she enters her imaginary dreamworld where everything has a representation of what she knows from real life.

This is a very visual film. McKean fills the screen with his lush imagery. If you've seen McKeans artwork and know how beautiful it is, then you know how incredible it is to see his pictures come to life on this film. This movie is eye candy, and for those of you out there who love art and love films that give their utter most importance to their visual aspect, then you will love this movie. McKean fills the screen with really outlandish, strange, weird and dreamlike situations. Nothing is what you would expect.

Some people might feel that this type of movie is all style and art and no substance simply because its such a visual film. But I sincerely think that this is not the case with Mirrormask. With a writer like Neil Gaiman in charge, well, you can almost tell that the movie is going to have some deep psychological themes going on for it. And it does. Every character, every situation, every word spoken in Helenas dream world means something in Helenas real life. So be on the look out for those comparisons.

The movie has some truly astounding sequences that left me breathless and my jaw was dropping. First there was the giants orbiting sequence with these huge stone giants floating in the air and then there's this sequence in which Helena gets transformed into a dark princess that is simply amazing. They really did a good job of mixing music with visuals in that sequence. You'll just have to wait and see it to understand how beautiful it is.

This movie wears its influences on its sleaves and has no problems in showing that. There's many similarities between this movie and Labyrinth, Legend and most of all The Never Ending Story. Its the only thing I didn't love about this movie. It felt like they remade The Never Ending Story with elements from Labyrinth and Legend. Take all those movies, shake em together, add a little bit of psychological depth and incredible visuals and you've got Mirrormask. So if there's anything bad to say, its that in its narrative, its similar to a few other films. But on a visual level, its a whole other thing, so that sort of balances its self out.

I liked the fact that Helena wasn't a dumb little girl. She was very head strong and very smart. She wasn't a dumb little girl stumbling across a strange landscape. She was quick and witty and she realizes the situation in which she is in quickly and I liked that about her character which was very well played by Stephanie Leonides.

So in conclusion, this film will blow you away with both its visuals and its story. Its a mixed bag of other films you've seen before story wise, but on a visual level the film will be like nothing you've ever seen before.

Rating: 5 out of 5