color as an indicator of journey
Oct. 4th, 2005 11:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
egypturnashI 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![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
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.)
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.)
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Date: 2005-10-04 11:36 pm (UTC)