Helena: I am queen of everything in this part of town.
I am queen of the city, and queen of the towers, and queen of the small little wiggly things
And everyone who looks at me says 'oh she is such a wonderful queen!
'And not ever embarrassing at all, and so normal and goes to a school. There's nothing to worry about except...'
Black sock: Ah! But I am the queen of evil and I must warn you, you cannot escape my cunning use of black magic markers!
I like MirrorMask, so I did something stupid and read its reviews.
You know, to see if there was some detail I overlooked or
an interpretation I had never considered before.
And it went about as well as expected.
Meaning, I devolved into a masochist rage spiral fueled by curiosity and the belief it couldn’t possibly get any worse
Hardison: *scoff* 
Parker: You're adorable.
Confronted with article after article of misquotes, unfair comparisons, and utter lack of understanding
I decided to fling myself at the source material and see if there wasn’t a new light I could shine on this old
(ish) movie.
To start Mirror Mask focuses on a teenage circus performer named Helena
who’s tired of fulfilling her dad’s dream and wants to live her own.
As a result she shirks her duty, sasses her mom, and is an overall obnoxious teenager until said mom becomes deathly ill.
Then she takes being a doting daughter, visiting her mother & bringing her: hand drawn cards, fruit, and the like
to atone for whatever hand she may have played in this event
It’s during this heart felt love fest that we get the first bit foreshadowing of what this movie is going to be about via a Longfellow quote.
The devil's in the detail my friends.
As a result of being off the road, Helena sees what life is like without her mother.
Which doesn’t paint a very flattering picture of her father as flounders to
manage a business
return hospital calls
and be a parent to a teen whose mother and manager are sick
A plight that Helena seems pretty unsympathetic about,
but she's still processing herself
and a part of that process comes in the form of a dream
And this is where we run into a lot of problems with the critics.
In the dream, Helena meets a masked man named Valentine
who helps her out of a sticky situation
and in return she volunteers to be his juggler.
read what you will into that
Anywho, a lot of folk seem to be fleeing in the face of this encroaching shadow stuff when Helena gets arrested.
Brought before the minister a plot point is revealed.
A charm has been stolen and (presumably) the balance between the two opposing Queendoms will be restored if it’s returned.
Again we see a familiar face paralleling a condition similar to Helena’s own mother.
So Helena says she’ll get the charm and the story gets a quest availing us to both world and character development.
It is while Helena’s talking to a pair of floating giants (in the midst of an attack) that
she’s given a ton of information like:
a key,
a place to start looking,
and the name of the charm itself.
Surprise! It's MirrorMask.
Unfortunately, one of the giants succumbs to the black sludge, and the other just sort of floats off
giving us this visual metaphor for Helena's parents.
*Titanic theme song plays*
The story continues with Helena and Valentine finding “the high ground” shaped like the key where they run into a bunch of flying monkeys.
Fortunately they’re rendered differently enough to not get sued and have the added benefit of names.
Not that any of this matters before they’re once again under attack.
Luckily, a few escape to take Helena and Valentine to where the Mirror Mask is.
smack dab in the middle of the two Queendoms.
Now before I continue, I think it’s important to know that Helena’s dream is based off the drawings hanging in her room.
So when she looks out a window facing said space, she can see into it where the shadow princess has taken over her body & life.
So while Helena is pondering where the Mirror Mask is, Helena 2-point-bitch picks up the dome of drawers, and plops it right in middle of the Shadow Queen’s territory.
And if that wasn’t bad enough, Valentine then betrays her to the Shadow Queen. After which she becomes the Queen’s daughter in what many have called a Quay Brother’s rip-off.
I prefer homage because Dave McKean’s not an idiot and 'the Street of Crocodiles' is fairly well known in artistic circles.
But where the Quay’s were trying to encapsulate Bruno Schultz’s short story about what it means to be alive, this is a transitional.
Meaning it adds nothing to the plot other than to show Helena’s transformation from this pajama-wearing ragamuffin to the Queen’s daughter.
And when she doesn’t cooperate the tailor dummies sedate her with glitter,
paint her up,
And redress her anyway while singing the Carpenters ‘Close to You.’
It is fantastically possessive and completely controlling but not necessarily threatening.
After all the dummies are just agents of the Queen who is Helena’s mother
or (more accurately) her shadow part.
Shadow Queen: Oh...you'll do.
Segue into Jungian psychology here
it would be the easiest thing to look at the imagery and say this is a straight forward good versus evil tale
but delve deeper and it's not.
According to Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung,
the psyche can be broken down further than Freud’s id, ego, superego model.
So just how much further? Well instead of three there are five archetypes
First off we have the Ego.
which is what you consciously have access to like memory and active thought.
Everything else falls in the realm of the unconscious, starting with anima or animus
which is the opposing male/female aspects of whatever gender you identify as.
So if you’re female your animus is male. If you’re male your anima is female.
The rigid gender roles of the early 20th century really didn’t account for anything more substantial like we have today.
Moving on however, is the shadow self
which consists of the things we reject about ourselves like
deep desires, primal instincts, jealousies, etc.
You know, the things we morally wag a finger at and say ‘shame on you’ to before we try and temper them with our better angels
Then we have the Self, which is the sum of all of these including
The Persona which (surprise, surprise) means mask in Latin.
That is, the act we put on in front of other people.
and we do put on acts.
All of us
Weather its work, family, friends, or strangers we all behave a little differently depending on who we’re with.
Hopefully you’re getting where I’m going with this because
the Ego is Helena
the Shadow Self is the princess,
the Persona is the MirrorMask
And the Self is what she becomes when she unites all of them via individuation
AKA the dream itself.
The animus isn’t there because it doesn’t matter
at least not to the story.
But if you want to make an argument for it being Valentine, be my guest.
I won’t simply because I see him as the romantic interest and not the male part of Helena’s psyche.
So if this was the purpose of the plot, then why include the Shadow mother at all?
Well…subplot mostly.
I mean, this is a coming of age story after all and what kind is ever complete without a familial authoritarian figure for the protagonist to rebel against?
Helena: There's no need to shout at me!
Joanne: I am not shout--!
Joanne: You're going to be the death of me.
Helena: I wish I was.
The contempt Helena holds for her mother at the beginning of the film is redefined when she is forced to live as the Shadow Princess.
Confronted with everything she thought her mother was Helena finally realizes her mom isn’t an overbearing monster
and that the mirror mask was never about helping the Queen. Why? Because her mom isn’t the ruler, she is.
And when you’re an adult you can’t rely on your parents to save your world when you’re the one destroying it.
So when Helena finally realizes that (in the most literally way), she’s ready to unite the pieces of herself and wake up.
It’s an ambitious subject matter and unfortunately a lot of it does get bogged down or lost in the visuals.
Which makes sense, McKean is a well known comic book artist and a benefit of that medium is a
reader can spend as much time as they want examining a panel or page.
With a movie, it’s the director who dictates the pacing.
Not only that but they have the last say in what gets added to or removed from a set.
Meaning there’s a lot of background detail.
Maybe too much.
And we’re so busy looking at everything else that we’re more likely to miss what’s important.
Still credit where credit is due, and a lot of it needs to be given to the cast.
Stephanie Leonidas especially, whom working with a digital backlot makes the world and its characters seem real.
Which brings me to the visuals.
Simply put, they’re a product of a small budget.
As in direct to DVD small.
$4 million tops.
I’m not going to even argue the possibilities of them using practical effects because
despite the name they’re anything but in terms of finances.
Which brings me to my biggest pet peeve where criticism from critics was concerned.
Measuring this film against Goliaths like ‘the Wizard of Oz’ and ‘Alice in Wonderland’ is not only unfair, it’s ignorant.
This movie was commissioned by a studio to make a fantasy film in the same veins as ‘Labyrinth’ and it succeeded.
Given more time and a larger budget
maybe they could have produced something more worthy of its predecessors
but given what it is...it’s stunning.
Not perfect, but well worth the $10 Target prices it at.
So if you’re looking for a fantasy film where the hero isn’t stupidly altruistic and the villain pointlessly evil,
I say give Mirror Mask a chance. It just might surprise you.
Or not if you’re watching this review. Gods damn it!
