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MirrorMask What do you get if you cross an author with a darkly humorous take on traditional mythology (Neil Gaiman) with an artist and director with a dreamlike vision (Dave McKean)? The answer, it seems, is a visually stunning piece of film making which simultaneously assaults the optic nerves whilst distracting the brain from a somewhat inconsistent narrative.
As a fan of Neil Gaiman’s literary work I was understandably eager to see MirrorMask, and when you add in the fact that I’m a sucker for Dave McKean’s ephemeral and complexly layered visuals it becomes no great surprise that I jumped at the chance.
MirrorMask opens promisingly with the heroine of the piece - Helena (well played by Stephanie Leonidas), a 15 year old girl like any other save for her somewhat unconventional parents: a pair of circus performers. In an entertaining but ordinary segment we learn that she has an active imagination and a gift for drawing which befits her life among the extended performing family of the circus. Her inevitable teenage angst comes to the fore in a clash with her mother over her ironic desire to flee the circus and join the real world.
Things come to a sharp halt midway through an evening performance as an unnamed illness hospitalises Helena’s mother, Joanne (Gina McKee). In fairly short order we are transported away from the gaudy world of the big top to the washed-out and windswept environment of the Brighton beachfront. Helena finds herself stuck between staying at home with her Auntie Nan's choice of "educational" daytime TV and visiting her barely conscious mother in hospital, as her father (Rob Brydon) busies himself tying to keep the family circus together and the bank manager happy.
After learning that several of the circus performers are jumping ship in search of paid work while the circus is on an enforced hiatus, Helena discovers that her mother is due to be operated on that night. We promptly segue through an awakening in the middle of the night to a strange world populated by half monkey half bird creatures, migratory books, and the malevolent tentacled shadows which threaten to swallow anything in their path.
And so with the initial exposition and characterisation dispensed with, which although competent and well-acted could have been directed by anyone with a passing familiarity with human drama, we step into Dave McKean’s world. And what a world it is - populated by an entirely masked or non-human cast, it is awash with McKean’s trademark layered style which perfectly suits the dreamlike world assembled from the multitude of drawings adorning Helena’s bedroom wall.
As Helena is drawn further into this world, she learns that the White Queen is in a coma-like sleep while her realm is slowly swallowed by the encroaching shadows, and that a Princess looking uncannily like her is to blame. Upon learning that the only thing that can restore the White Queen is an unknown charm Helena sets out to find it, as any good heroine would.
Helena's self-appointed guide through this eldritch landscape is Valentine (Jason Barry), an inconstant and easily distracted juggler with an eye for the main chance. Barry's performance is engaging, which is no mean feat when you consider that the only human feature visible beneath his mask is his mouth. Barry acquits himself admirably in a necessarily ostentatious role where voice and gesture must convey what could otherwise be more conservatively realised through facial expression, but it is the environment which demands the viewers’ attention as the pair set about trying to find an unidentified charm in an increasingly strange and hostile world.
Dave McKean's layered style gives an otherworldly yet strangely organic feel to this place, with the harsh artificiality of crisp computer generated scenery frequently softened by the gossamer silhouette of another of Helena’s drawings drifting through the field of view. Ironically, it is this excess of visual flair that proves to be the most significant failing of the film.
The rest of the story is all but irrelevant - girl searches for magic cure, girl confronts fears, girl finds magic cure, girl wakes up and discovers it was all a dream, girl finds out that her mother’s illness has been defeated. Cut to end credits.
The most disappointing thing that I took away from the film was a feeling that it could have been so much better. Neil Gaiman can write tighter, more original and more engaging material. Dave McKean has produced some incredible visuals and presented a new and interesting twist on pictorial storytelling, and yet the film doesn't work as a coherent whole.
Sure, MirrorMask is dazzling, the performances engaging given the faceless and/or computer-generated nature of the vast proportion of the characters, and the cast acquit themselves admirably, but the narrative is flimsy and derivative. In a way it is an interesting analogy to the film's dreamlike nature - it engaged my senses and led me on a whirlwind ride through strange and wonderful landscapes, but within five minutes of waking up I really can't remember much of what actually went on.
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