Mirrormask

I'd better tell you about this film Mirrormask quick smart, because it seems like the sort of film that'll drop out of its limited distribution in about two weeks- catch it while you can.

Mirrormask is, as anyone with even a scintilla of decent popculture knowledge will already know, the brainchild of Neil Gaiman and David McKean, both of Sandman fame. And that's basically all you need to know- the film is very much like what would happen to you if you fell into a copy of Sandman: The Collected Dust Covers and wandered around randomly for an hour (sometimes you could even see the paper it was drawn on). It'd be pretty amazing, but you'd have trouble explaining exactly what you saw to anyone after you got out.

If you come looking for a plot, well, there's no much here. A girl named Helena (who is quite appropriately named as she looks very much like a young Helena Bonham Carter) wakes up in an odd fantasy world (cleverly comprised of the drawings she makes on her bedroom wall) that she takes to be (and may well be) a dream. So far, so Alice in Wonderland. But what Helena slowly realizes is that she's merely traded places with her evil counterpart, who is living it up in the 'real' world (a beautifully shot Brighton) by, er, smoking cigarettes, making out with punks and fighting with her dad.

If this sounds like a bit of a plot to you, well, this is all hinted at, but the majority of the film is actually just Helena wandering around her dream world. The problem with the dream world, as incredibly well visualized as it is, is that everything that happens there seems artibrary and without consequence. They go from A to B to C (and at each pick up a new 'quest point', something Gaiman has railed against in the past), but there's no sense of any true connection outside an author's whimsy or an excuse to show one more imaginative setpiece.

And that's really all there is to this film: it's a long parade of really lovely images (it actually reminded me a lot of The Cell on that level). And on that basis I really enjoyed it and if you love the artistry of comics or surrealist art I think you'd find it a real kick on that level. If you're looking for substance, look elsewhere. You get the sense that there's some kind of allegory about teenage angst and growing away from your parents, but it's so lightly glossed over it seems almost an afterthought (it clearly aspires to be a modern-day Labyrinth, but unfortunately falls short in both the thematic and raw wonder departments). It's frustrating because you're not really sure who its aimed at. Kids will find it utterly confusing and adults see that behind the confusion there isn't any meaning. Maybe it was made for the ADD generation where all that matters is the moment, and a procession of cool images will suffice.

And I don't say all this as criticism- I think that the film is perfect for what it is- a jaunt through The Dream. If they ever do make a Sandman movie, this is how they should do it. But there are a lot of trips into dreamland that manage to have both plot and emotional resonance, and I think this...I think this taps into the new style of film-making, where anything you can imagine can now be created. But imagining cool stuff isn't enough to make a truly great film- for that you need a solid story, with consequences and characters you can connect with.