color as an indicator of journey

[egypturnash]

I was oddly cold to Mirrormask. It was beautiful and dreamlike and pretty, and had many lovely sequences (the ride on the Bobs-and-Malcom reminded me of recurring fragments of my dreams). But I never quite felt like the lead's journey through this MagicalLand of Fantasy was happening.

Part of it was being intensely aware of the look of the film. If you hate Dave McKean's art, you'll hate the film, because it's one of his pictures come to life. There are moments where the camera just drifts through a shamelessly Dave McKean landscape. I was very aware of it as art rather than as a story I could be absorbed in.

But a big part was color. The beginning and end are in the full spectrum of colors found in the Real World... but the entire fantasy realm is sepia-tone. Grey, black, tan, brown. There are little fragments of other colors but they never take over. Every sequence strikes the same color note. Soft focus comes and goes with no discernable logic. This unity of color gave me a sense of staying in one place and time, of the journey not really happening. Compare it to its admitted inspiration, Labyrinth: the many strange places of the Labyrinth are strikingly different in color. Stone greys, hedgemaze greens, bright oranges, stark contrasts... the only striking color difference in the main body of Mirrormask is the sequence where the heroine's companion wears the title object.

---

Also, before seeing the movie, we encountered a minor djinn and fed it a few bits of ripped-up paper. It was queenofstripes's first encounter with one, and she was amazed; I'd seen them before, as there was one that liked the entrance of one of the buildings on UNO's campus. (Or we found a place where the buildings channel wind into a persistent gyre that we see and hear when it picks up dead leaves - but we felt rather animistic that day.)

Comments

[ultraken.livejournal.com]

Metacritic seems to show very mixed reviews, so you're evidently not the only one cold to it. I might or might not see it based on what I've been reading.

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'd say you should go see it while it's available, even with my odd reaction to it!

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

All of my favorite movies are monochrome. ;-) Pi, The Insider, Seven, Dark City, Primer, Naked Lunch, Fight Club, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid...

[shatterstripes.livejournal.com]

B&W doesn't count as "monochrome" for the internal logic that seems to be going on here.

As I recall, the monochromatic movies you listed that I've seen had strong color schemes, but different parts had different color notes. Different places, moods, colors: progression.

[turbinerocks.livejournal.com]

Well, David Fincher, who is one of my favorite directors, is a good example of someone who is extremely visual but he's not changing up the color at all, really. He's interested in a patina. His visual thrust is all about texture and composition, film and cinematography effects (shaking the camera in Fight Club, "impossible" camera angles accomplished with CG, the film-grainy flashbacks in The Game) Fight Club is grey and full of flourescent lights, and Fincher is very interested in what flourescent lights look like on peoples' skin. Paper St. House is grey, Lou's basement is grey. The Game and Seven are all shades of amber and red and pretty much all about shadows. Panic Room is blue from beginning to end. Primer is flourescent lights and not much else, and has sort of a green tinge to everything. Naked Lunch is sepia from beginning to end. There's not a lot of color, there's plenty of lighting and texture. Delicatessen (it's a better example than Dark City, now that I think about it, there's some pushing of color in the flashbacks) is almost colorless but retains a great sense of drama.

I guess I'll know more when I see the movie, though. All of the mixed reviews that Ultraken mentioned, I've read a lot of them, and they remind me of the mixed reviews of so many of my favorite movies (and games!), they're placing far more importance on Mirrormask's plot than the visuals, and grading accordingly, which would have doomed movies like The Wizard of Oz to critical sneer, were it not already an unassailable classic. The Cell was critically loathed and excoriated, but I loved it. Reviews of that movie were full of frustrated would-be-filmmakers using their columns to smear the intelligence of anyone who likes being visually engaged. Movie reviewers emphasize plot and de-emphasize visuals (which I suppose is the opposite of games, which emphasize visuals and de-emphasize gameplay) Either way, both miss the mark frequently when it comes to what I like. So I really never trust reviews. Reviews of Led Zeppelin's records at the time when Led Zeppelin was making albums were describing the band as populist tripe. ;-) I can go back and read Ebert's review of Fight Club and just be aghast at how completely he missed the thrust of the film, and seemed more interested in reviewing its potential effect on people than the actual work.

[cobaltie.livejournal.com]

I'm going to try and steadily ignore reviews and reactions to MirrorMask until after I see it, but it'll pretty hard. Won't be in Portland for another week or two.

A month or two ago I saw a MAJOR Djinn (dust devil, whatever) just outside my apartment in this construction area. It had to have been 10 feet across, swirling dust and trash around, and then the most awesome part--it lifted off. The entire whirling column flew off into the air still spinning, over our heads, dropping trash here and there. I should pay attention for more wonder like that. It fuels me.

[cktraveler.livejournal.com]

Yeah ... I have difficulty cultivating a sense of wonder without color. I guess it's because so many colors are muted to me anyway, so bright colors are kind of an imagination trigger.

It's one reason I'm such a Muppet; I hate having this boring beige skin. I want to be green or blue or something cool! (No pun intended.)

[jenkatb4u.livejournal.com]

Sounds like a real dream then. Most of them are in pale colors or complete monotone or duotone. Very rarely do we ever experience a dream so vivid that we 'wonder what we're doing here. . .'

[zeeth_kyrah]

As I seem to recall from the Time online interview of Joss Whedon and Neil Gaiman (courtesy a certain rat), the director was too obsessed with the reality of his own world to let a fantasy world be real. So he pushed the dream aspect of it further than he probably should have.

I'll have to see the film for myself, but I'm already inclined to agree. I want fantasy to be itself, to stand on its feet and ask, "Why justify anything?" I want the story to believe in itself, so that I don't have to.

[jenkatb4u.livejournal.com]

Mm.. Interesting. A story that's aware of its implied fiction, so it imagines itself real so it can't just be imagined away..