Skip to main content

MirrorMask: Film Platypus

Think with me for a moment...

Last weekend I was privileged to watch MirrorMask, Niel Gaiman's first foray into the film industry.  While the story has elements that seem to presage later films like Coroline, Dave McKean's odd visual style give it a unique feel.  It's that unique feel, a sort of post-modern-industrial-goth-chic, that has stayed with me a week after viewing the film.  As a work done in collaboration with Jim Henson Studios, that's not surprising.  Other Henson productions such as The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth strike me as notable more for their production value than for their story lines.  Don't get me wrong.  They're not bad stories, just traditional and unremarkable.  They just get the job done so that the visuals are freed up to run away with the show.

All this makes me wonder how important story is to film.  Take Terrence Malik, for instance.  There isn't a lot of plot to The New World, but the visuals are so incredible and thought-provoking that they bear the weight that would traditional be assigned to the story.  To go with a different example, think of how Dino de Laurentis used the score of Conan the Barbarian to take the place of the sparse and rather traditional dialog.  It's the strong combination of visuals and music that drive that movie along.  Back to high-brow film, we might also look at the disconnected vignettes that make up Andrei Rubalev.  Perhaps none of those are really examples of visuals or music replacing plot, but simply alternate methods of story telling.

Anyhow, there's no hard and fast thesis to this post, more of just an "I wonder."  I wonder.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Platypus Reads Part XXVII

Thoughts after reading the "Iliad" to prepare a Greece unit for my students: -Hector is a jerk until he's dead. He even advocates the exposure of Achaean corpses and then has the cheek to turn around and ask Achilles to spare his. He rudely ignores Polydamas' prophecies and fights outside the gate to save his pride knowing full well what it will cost his family and city. After he's dead, he becomes a martyr for the cause. -Agamemnon has several moments of true leadership to balance out his pettiness. In this way, he's a haunting foil to Achilles: the two men are more alike than they want to acknowledge. -We see that Achilles is the better man at the funeral games of Patroclos. His lordliness, tact, and generosity there give us a window into Achilles before his fight with Agamemnon and the death of Patroclos consumed him. -Nestor is a boring, rambling, old man who's better days are far behind him, and yet every Achaean treats him with the upmo...
15 comments
Read more

Seeing Beowulf Through Tolkien: The Platypus Reads Part CXCIX

After spending a few weeks wrestling with Tolkien's interpretation of Beowulf , I found myself sitting down and reading Seamus Heaney's translation of the text during a spare moment.  I came to the place where Beowulf presents Hrothgar with the hilt of the ancient sword that slew Grendel's mother.  Hrothgar looks down at the hilt with its ancient runes and carvings depicting the war between the giants and God and meditates on the fortunes of men.  In a flash of insight, I thought: this is the whole poem! Let me explain.  Tolkien believed that the genuine contribution of the Northern peoples to European culture was the theory of courage.  The Northern heroes, at their best, were men who fought for order against chaos -a battle they knew they were doomed to lose.  If they were true heroes, their souls would join the gods and aid them in the final battle against darkness and its monsters and again go down fighting, spitting in the face of the meaninglessness...
3 comments
Read more

The Platypus and Theological Localism

My wife and I were listening the other day to Dr. Fred Sanders give a paper of California Theological Localism.  It was one of the more technical pieces we've heard from him, and it was fun to stretch our brains a little.  If I understand it right, the main idea of Theological Localism is that place matters and will shape the theology of its inhabitants in certain ways.  This could be seen as determinative, or merely as fodder for apologetic engagement, both of which Sanders rejects as insufficient or problematic.  What exactly is wanted seems to be a theological engagement with place, specifically California, in a way that Sanders and company feel has been neglected.  If that's not clear, the fault is mine as a listener or a writer. Of course, the idea of a theology of place caught my attention and my immediate response was "someone should do this for New England."  New England, after all, is its own peculiar place with, by American standards, a long, va...
6 comments
Read more