Mirrormask: My 700th Movie

I went to watch Mirrormask at the Pheonix last night. It is a wonderful movie based on concepts by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean and I was extremely desperate to see it. Mirrormask tells the story of Helena, who is born into a family of circus entertainers. After a quarrel, her mother falls very ill and needs to undergo an operation, and Helena blames herself for what has happened. The night before her operation, she finds herself entering a strange unreal world that is based on her own imagination and artwork and is tasked with restoring the balance between light and dark in that world by finding the "mirrormask" and waking the queen of light. As she goes about her quest, with her companion Valentine in tow, they chance upon many strange beings and she realizes that the line between dream and reality is increasingly being blurred and she can see through a window into her world, and things there seem to be unravelling.

To do the movie justice I perhaps have to begin by describing my initial reaction to the movie. Upon leaving the theatre, I found myself in yet more British easter rain, but it didn't matter to me. I felt this wonderful upsurge of delight, this sudden urge to want to forget about buses and bicycles and supermarkets and bars and all that. The rain seemed something to delight in even. I had the most powerful sense that international relations and ethics and epistemology and political sociology were the most terribly bloated and weighted things compared to the wonderful light airiness of the dream-like fantasy I had just left. They say that the best fantasy makes children of us all, and fills us with a special kind of wonder and joy. I kind of felt that at that moment.

Of course I was probably overexaggerating things - the movie wasn't really an instant masterpiece and was rough around the edges in a way. But I do love Neil Gaiman's work - it has a earthiness, a wonderous light humour to it that is amazing. Gaiman's fanatasy world isn't completely fairy tale like, or it is more like the fairy tales of old as they were meant to be (before Disney happified them) where betrayal is real, where despair is a possibility. The defining thing about Mirrormask is of course the visual ideas - the characters themselves, but also the set design and concepts. It was alien and eerie in a wonderful way. One scene stands out: the most sinister powerful transformation/seduction scene I have ever seen, when Helena succumbs to the Black Queen and agrees to serve as the substitute to the Black Queen's daughter and is dressed up in velvety black Gothic glory by live mannequins coming out of boxes to the tune of a cracked up electric version of the Carptenter's Close To You. That scene itself is worth the price of admission, not to mention the flying books, the cats with faces and everything else.

Mirrormask is a wonderful feat of the creative imagination, even more so considering that it was made on a budget of only US$4 million. It will cause you to marvel, to wonder, and perhaps even to feel a wonderful sense of mystery again. Nothing is quite like it.

I guess it is quite apt then, seeing my great love of Neil Gaiman and his work, that Mirrormask is the 700th Movie that I have seen (in any medium) according to the list that I compiled and have been periodically updating. I am certain that I may have missed a few here and there, but I am proclaiming Mirrormask my 700th according to my records. I cannot help but wonder what my 1000th movie will be like; I can only hope that it will be something similar to this.