Not Coming to a Theater Near You
You know him?”
“Not socially. His name’s Jaws, he kills people.
Nowadays animated children’s films tend to fall into one of two categories: (1) the wannabe sublime, which use state-of-the-art effects to bully us into an unearned, storebought “sense of wonder”; and (2) the deliberately irreverent, full of au courant pop culture references, flatulent animals, and tired subversion of tropes the primary audience presumably hasn’t even experienced in non-ironized form. In the first corner we have stuff like The Polar Express, The Tale of Despereaux, WALL-E, and Disney’s endless direct-to-video sequels to its mid-century canon; in the second, the likes of Ice Age, Shrek, Shark Tale, Kung Fu Panda, and so and so forth ad nauseam. (No, I haven’t seen all these movies, and no, you can’t make me.)
The magnificent Coraline elegantly sidesteps this forced option by returning to the roots of modern children’s entertainment. While based on a 2002 novel by Sandman writer Neil Gaiman, Coraline feels much older, tapping into that special combination of enchantment and terror that child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim long ago identified as the key attraction of fairy tales. Coraline, a young girl at loose ends after her family moves to Oregon, finds a secret passageway in their new house that leads to a mirror world where it’s always nighttime, her parents have buttons for eyes, cats can talk, and all of her desires are instantly granted. Something of a cross between Alice in Wonderland and Eraserhead, Coraline is genuinely disturbing even for grown-ups, investigating themes of abandonment, violence, sexuality and race while remaining familiar and whimsical enough to take, and even love. Most important, Coraline never lets dream logic get overwhelmed by commercial formula: there’s always something surprising, scary, and intuitively right about to happen at any given moment, whether it advances the story or reassures audience expectations or not.
Just as distinctive and uncompromising are the visuals: director Selick, a genius animator who’s been somewhat hemmed in on previous projects (The Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach, and the fascinating botch that is Monkeybone), here recaptures the sui generis surrealism of his brilliant Slow Bob in the Lower Dimensions and comes up with the most satisfyingly weird kid’s movie since Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away. The more CGI comes to dominate the landscape, the more I appreciate seeing different kinds of animation from time to time, and Coraline brings the art of stop-motion animation to a new level, blending the eerie drabness of the Brothers Quay with the background detail and density of recent Pixar projects. See it in 3-D if you can; there are no Monster Chiller Horror Theater-style trick effects, which is a blessing, but the extra depth perception really enhances the satisfying tactility of the stop-motion animation.
by Evan Kindley | Source: 35mm print
18 Mar 2009 11:26 AM | Comments (8)
Ah, Evan … such harsh words for Wall-E, which locates small moments of incredible joy in its celebration of the sublime pleasures of human detritus? Still, I really want to see Coraline (though the 3-D is no longer an option here in the still frozen north).
haha, yes, to put Wall-E (which I mildly enjoyed) in the same category as the Polar Express (which made me want to kill myself) is rough! And Shark Tale is totally underrated, dude. (Kidding, I haven’t seen that. )
All right, WALL-E was OK. I actually really liked the parts set on Earth (with the aforementioned sublime detritus) but couldn’t really get with the preachier space station scenes.
Still, I feel like there’s something inherent in the aesthetic of WALL-E — and, to a lesser extent, the other Pixar movies — that seems like it will date really badly, and I think it’s that it’s always going for this “sense of wonder.” I guess I tend to like kids’ films that create intricate little worlds rather than big spectacles: those are the ones that’ve stayed with me from my childhood, anyway.
You’re on to something as to the digital age’s easy access to this “sense of wonder.” Too much of a good thing is too much of a good thing. Still, when I think back to my childhood (late-1960s-early-1970s), I can’t think of anything that comes close to what youngsters today (and, if I may be so bold, youngsters of your day) have to choose from. We were offered up substandard, live-action Disney movies (Kurt Russell & Jodie Foster flicks), big-budget musicals (like Hello Dolly), Bedknobs & Broomsticks, The Apple Dumpling Gang, Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, Chitty Chitty, Bang Bang, That Darned Cat!, The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes, The Love Bug, Benji … No surprise I turned to Kubrick and Altman in my early, early teens. I was searching for that sense of wonder. I’d say Carroll Ballard’s The Black Stallion is probably the only 70s kid flick worth holding onto. Quite similar to WALL-E when I think about it. Half the film a visually poetic work of pure cinema; the other half an enjoyable, sentimental genre exercise. I guess what I’m saying is that you got your intricate little worlds of wonder and your hyperreal worlds of CGI product (with occasional nods to wonder). Me? I got Don Knotts and and a talking Volkswagon.
Yeah, you know part of it as well is that I grew up in the age of home video (I was born in 1979): so even though the product that was actually being released to the market might have been substandard (the Disney theatrical releases were similarly crummy when I was a kid: stuff on the order of Oliver & Company and _The Rescuers Down Under) I had access to plenty of older, more stimulating options.
My favorite animated films as a kid Ѭ†or at least the ones that I remember, and still have a lingering fondness for Ѭ†were Robin Hood, The Sword in the Stone and Mary Poppins (which was live action with animated sequences), none of which are big on visual set pieces but all of which seemed endlessly fascinating to me in their depiction of fictional worlds. I also loved Henson stuff, like Labyrinth and The Dark Crystal (which actually were coming out in the eighties); and, to speak up for a drastically underrated (and terrifying) film, Walter Murch’s Return to Oz. These movies all have a kind of density of imaginative detail that I think is missing in a lot of the children’s films being released now, even though the technical detail in the current films (character design, backgrounds, etc.) is off the charts compared to what those films had. So I appreciated Coraline, which has a little bit of that dense, imaginative quality, I think: here’s hoping it sparks a new trend.
But I don’t know, it’s probably impossible not to be nostalgic when it comes to the entertainment of your youth (although you’ve managed it nicely) and I agree that kids today have it pretty good, artistically speaking. What does your daughter like best, by the way?
I should say also that I have fond memories of Bedknobs & Broomsticks and Willy Wonka, as well.
Coraline is stunning. Probably the best film I’ve seen this year. I could quibble (I wish the narrative invested as much energy in defining the other-mother’s desires as it does Coraline’s), but this is a visually stimulating, wondrously strange, fantastically surreal film for all ages. The Real-D imaging is also very impressive. This was my first experience with the new technology (talk about your sense of wonder) and all assumptions were completely thrown out the window (though wearing glasses on top of glasses can be a bit disconcerting). Thanks for the push Evan.
Agreed with Jeff, I think that putting one of the greatest film in the history (WALL-E) next to Polar Express is a bit rough. As for Coraline, it’s now my all time favourite movie and I think that it’s sadly underrated.
Jeff
8 April 2009
1:18 PM