Through The Looking Glass
Classic motifs meet edgy art in magic 'MirrorMask'

Hold on to your eyeballs; they'll be popping like corks on New Year's Eve over Mirrormask. This strange and wondrous visual adventure was concocted for the screen by graphic artist and fledgling director Dave McKean and master storyteller Neil Gaiman (who collaborated on the now-classic Sandman graphic novel series, among many other projects). Combining elements of The Wizard of Oz and Alice Through The Looking Glass with an edgy graphic novel sensibility, and a folkloric hero's (in this case, heroine's) journey worthy of Joseph Campbell, MirrorMask is one of the mose dazzling and original pieces of cinema artistry you'll see in a long, long time.

Under the auspices of the Jim Henson Company, McKean and Gaiman conceived of the the film to combine live action with offbeat creations from Henson's fabled Creatutre Shop and dynamic CGI animation techniques. MirrorMask may hark back to the fantasy classics in plot, but it has an eerie, funky, subconscious, and wildly imaginative look all its own.

In typical Gaiman fashion, a familiar premise is given an ironic twist. 15-year-old Helena (pert and engaging Stephanie Leonidas, looking like a young Helena Bonham Carter) wants to run away, not to the circus, but away from it: a cut-rate Cirque du Soleil her ringmaster-juggler father (a disarming Rob Brydon) runs "on charm and peanuts." An obsessive sketcher, whose sprawling ink drawings of fantasy realms and creatures literally cover her walls, Helena is at the rebellious stage where she's tired of being bossed around to take tickets, perform on cue, and smile for strangers. In a backstage row with her loving mum (Gina McKee), Helena says something hateful; within hours, Mum is in hospital fighting for her life.

Helena is wracked with guilt, despite the assurances of both her parents that it's not her fault. On the night her mom is to have an operation, Helena tries to sleep, but can't. Taking a wrong turn as she wanders down a hall, she steps into a fantastic, surreal parallel world where a battle rages between good and evil. A fair Queen of Light (McKee again) languishes in a sleep from which she can't awaken, while the sinister Queen of Shadows (also McKee), from the Dark Lands across the border, sends invading armies of shadows to swallow up everything good in the world of light.

In the fantasy realm, everyone else wears a mask, and they all belittle Helena for not having one. "How do you know if you're happy or sad, without a mask?" demands the vagabond juggler Valentine (Jason Barry), a charming, if shady opportunist with an Irish brogue who acts as her guide. Mistaken for the shadow queen's runaway daughter, it falls to Helena to find an item called the Mirrormask to work a charm to revive the sleeping Queen of Light. In a world of mirror images, Helena soon realizes she's adrift in the fantasy world of her own strange and colossal drawings on her wall; every now and then she peers through a window into her own bedroom back home, where the pierced, leather-clad shadow queen's daughter is wreaking havoc in Helena's real life, "eating chips, snogging boys, smoking, and arguing with my dad!"

It doesn't take Freud to recognize a symbolic journey into adolescence, another classic fairy tale motif. Whether the real Helena, or the "anti-Helena," her doppelganger, will prevail adds tension to a story already rich in subtext beneath the visual panache. In one early scene, books spread their wing-like pages and take flight, ferrying Helena and Valentine away from the shadows to safety. In a witty, lyrical scene in a library, books rustle and coo on their shelves like doves, and Helena finds a Really Useful Book that always tells her exactly what to do (so long as she interprets its correctly).

The good and bad aspects of the mother (think Alice's red and white chess queens, or the witch and Glinda of Oz) are cleverly realized, especially with that unorthodox beauty, McKee, savoring both roles. And in a sequence of serene and chilling comic irony, a chorus of the dark queen's gilded, robotic handmaidens rise out of their jewel boxes to adorn Helena in the trapings of adolescence— goth make-up and nails, black lace and leather—while singing an eerie rendition of that most syrupy romantic pop ballad, Close To You.

But even if the story weren't so cleverly done, MirrorMask would be worth seeing for its breathtaking images alone. Entwined giants float benevolently in the sky above a cityscape of runaway staircases, bridges, and precariously tilting towers. Schools of fish swim blithely throght the air, and riddle-spouting sphinxes (cat-like, with rainbow wings and humanoid faces) prowl the alleyways. Even in her "real" world, Helena idly performs a play about good and evil with a black and white sock before a backdrop of her own drawings. Every frame in MirrorMask is an adrenalin rush of visual imagination (even when, occasionally, the plot seems to meander). Give yourself up and take a spin.

MIRRORMASK With Stephanie Leonidas, Jason Barry, and Gina McKee. Written by Neil Gaiman. Designed and directed by Dave McKean. A Samuel Goldwyn release. Rated PG. 101 minutes. (****)
Review published in Good Times, Oct. 13, 2005