Mirrormask
Directed by: Dave McKean
(Jim Henson Productions)
McKean’s work will be familiar to anyone who has wandered into a comic store in the past 20 years. His inimitable collaborations with writer Neil Gaiman on the Vertigo series Sandman and children’s books such as The Wolves in the Walls is continued here in their first film together, a story of a circus girl who gets trapped in a dream the night her mother has a serious operation. This is PG territory, so there’ll be no serial killers with teeth for eyes in Mirrormask, though the film does capture a certain kind of gothic strangeness typical of British children’s stories. Though McKean is a writer as well, he is primarily a visual artist, bringing his ease with photography, printmaking, collage, illustration and Photoshop wizardry to bear on the look of the film. It’s dreamy and wonderfully imaginative, though as one might expect with a story that takes place mostly in a dream, the narrative wanders occasionally too far from coherence. Still, the transference of McKean’s unique vision from page to screen is lovely to see plus, the addition of Henson’s creatures puts Mirrormask in the company of such peculiar fantasy as The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth, an association well deserved.
—Carsten Knox
This article appears in Dec 6-12, 2007.
