Talking Movies...again

Mirror Mask: 8/10

There are some works of art that one can admire for a very long time, simply puzzling over how on earth the creators managed to contrive them. What kind of person could invent such a world as the one Helena inhabited? I mean, books that fly to the library if they feel insulted; sphinxes that can be fooled; really useful books; and of course, the Mirror Mask itself? It seems more like a story straight from a dream than conscious imagination.

SPOILERS AND BRIEF SYNOPSIS HERE
Helena is a girl who lives a very eccentric life as the daughter of circus parents and she desperately wants to escape into what she thinks is a normal life. However, something occurs that will test her idea of "normal." After her mother falls ill, Helena enters a strange sort of dream world in which everyone wears masks and finds her facial expressions distorting and bizarre. She finds an unlikely companion in Valentine, the prideful, selfish man who once hoped to enter show business. When she is accused of being the princess of the shadow lands and the one who caused the White Queen to fall into a deep sleep, Helena seeks to find the cure for the Queen's affliction to clear her name and hopefully return home. She and Valentine quickly realize that they are searching for the Mirror Mask, a mysterious mask hidden away in the land. Unfortunately, they are running out of time because the Shadow Queen also believes Helena to be her daughter and takes her in. Helena soon discovers that the reason she is in this strange world is because the original Shadow Princess took the Mirror Mask and exchanged lives. Helena can only watch through reflections in windows as the Princess wreaks havoc in Helena's place. Eventually, Helena finds the Mirror Mask herself and reclaims the life that was hers and also learns to embrace her family and appreciate that circus life will be as "normal" as it gets.

What I especially liked about this movie was the intense imagination. It seems simply at first. Girl is trapped in dream world and needs to find the key to get out. But one finds that the plot and the world of the dreams is so closely intertwined with the so-called reality that at times, one might feel like they might be one and the same. A major theme appears to be reflections in the mirror. One is real and one is the opposite--yet the same. It kind of draws out the question of what you really see when you look into a mirror. Does the person looking back at you truly look back? And do they wonder if that's someone else looking back at them? Or maybe, they are, in a way, you--not just a reflection but you in the truest sense.
Mirror Mask challenges our preconceived notion of reality, gives us a healthy sense of doubt in our known world. It reminds us that there is always a space for wonder. It reminds us that inside, there might be something crazy, festering, that our thoughts have power and imagination is life. People are naive, insane, unreadable things; they don't make sense, but they are powerful in ways even they don't understand. Helena's drawings in "real-life" were manifested in the dream world as real things--for example, the sphinxes and the buildings in the city. She was the one who created the world. Her imagination brought this semi-reality to life.
It's hard for me to explain because when I try to think to hard about it, it blows my mind. The dream world is a stark conflict between light and dark--again, another theme I believe. But the most interesting part is the land in between the Shadow and Light lands. It is where dreams become a sort of reality, but isn't the entire world a dream become real? It is where imagination and reality begin to mix in crazy ways that are almost impossible to comprehend. There is always a light and a dark to counteract the other, but it is what happens in between that makes life interesting.
But enough philosophy here, although I am not sure how else to address the movie except philosophically. The negatives that I can come up with is the lack of explanation for what was happening with Helena's mother. It is evident that her mother and her illness had ties to the sleeping White Queen. But what kind of ties? The movie does not really elaborate on that. Another part that I wasn't satisfied with was the ending where Valentine eats the future fruit and sees himself entering Helena's world with the Mirror Mask in her place. What does this mean? I am not sure. I also feel sorry for the Shadow Princess. She's forced to be stuck with her awful mother because she doesn't belong in Helena's real life. Too bad there couldn't be resolution there. It would kind of ruin the movie if they had to resolve that family feud.
Other than that, this is a terrific thinking movie, definitely mentally stimulating. It certainly makes you reevaluate the concept of life, reality, and what you will really find beneath the mask of the mirror.