Coraline

I saw the Coraline at the Ziegfeld last night, a late night sojourn that ended with me coming back home around 2:30 in the morning. The film was marvelous, I'd suggest anyone who was on the fence to go ahead and give it a try. It's very much like the nightmare before Christmas, basically dolls captured in still-scene recomposed into a whole film. The film Coraline is based on the novel Coraline written by Neil Gaiman, though there were few crucial differences that anyone who read the book should have been able to pick out. You would be relieved to know that unlike most other Hollywood book-to-film adaptations, I got the feeling that certain elements of the story were edited in order to best fit the medium rather than some insane rating criteria, and on the whole it works very well. Neil Gaiman always had that fantastic flare to his writing that weren't quite fantasy yet fantastic enough to be unreal, very much like how Stephen King had a knack for turning the usual into unreality and explored the changes in human psyche within the metamorphosis of the world (personally I consider Neil Gaiman to be a much better writer than the Stephen King, if only in terms of the ingenuity of the imagination t work behind both writers' works). Coraline definitely has all the trappings of a fairy tale. A little girl lost in the woods, the haunted house, mysterious old woman, evil stepmother, and the circus of jumping mice. The film as a whole feels as if it was a modern juxtaposition of all the elements of the conventional fairytale throughout history, a mish-mash of all the archetypes that we all knew and loved regardless of the individual cultural background (which would also mean that the film will not appeal to you if you don't have the taste for the fantastic, but if that's the case what are you doing in the Coraline theater in the first place? Go watch 'he's just not that into you' or something). And surprisingly enough, it works well. For the duration of an hour and a half (was it longer or shorter? I literally got lost during the film, I still can't figure out just how much time I spent in the theater) I was lost in the fantastic yet familiar world of the Coraline, sympathizing with the cute-as-a-button main character and being awed at the visual tour-de-force of all the dolls being lighted up and blooming into living breathing beings.

Now, you should take Coraline for what it is. If you are looking for the kind of 'seriousness' present in the indie film like the Pi you will not find it here. There won't be any philosophical discourses and debates on the divinity or the holy moment in crafting film (as it was in the case of the Waking Life, another indie film which I suggest anyone with even half a brain to find and watch immediately, it might be a life-changing experience... It was for me, and despite all the heavy philosophical discourses in the film I'd say that it was also another form of fairytale distilled to fit the tastes of the people who consider themselves to be sophisticates). What you will find, however, is a very honest treatment of a little girl living and sometimes getting lost in a world where good and horrible things can happen when you open a wrong door (or should it be the correct door? Since if she couldn't find it the story would never have taken place?) in an old house. The film Coraline never tries to be what it isn't. It's just good at being what it is, and what it was intended to be. And shouldn't that be mark of a good film?

The version of Coraline I saw was formatted to be watched using a 3D glass, the kind you frequently see in the IMAX theaters with all the whales swimming around and weasels poking their nose into you face. Anyone with decent theater going experience should know what the whole deal is about. On the whole Coraline works well with the given medium. If you are looking for some sort of thrilling experience with hands and eyes popping into your face you are rather unlikely to find it, but if you are looking for a beautiful 2D experience with some added flavor the current version will do. I must add that the 3D versions of the film Coraline will not be in the theaters for the duration of its run, and whatever the theater that carries Coraline will revert back to normal 3D glass-less film in a week or two I think. I especially loved the garden scene in the movie. The 3D flowers lighting up and blooming into full shapes were very beautiful to watch and brought a smile to my face... A little side note on the matter of 3D glasses. Despite the message at the beginning of the film telling you to return the 3D glasses after the film, I think the Ziegfeld theater in Manhattan (about the only place that runs Coraline right now, oddly enough considering the hundreds of theaters in the city) actually gives you the glasses as a souvenir, which I found out only after walking out of the theater and got on the subway.

Another thing to watch out for after the film. If you are patient enough to sit through the very end of the credits, the film will display a very special message. It's a password. You can enter that password into the Coraline movie website to enter into a random drawing of special hand-stitched Coraline sneakers, and they even have adult-male sizes! (so it's not just for kids) I don't think I should tell you what the message is, but if you can't find the password page on the Coraline website (I spent close to ten minutes clicking on everything), the nice rock given by the ladies miss Forcible and miss Spink will help immensely in finally figuring out where to enter that password (which I promptly entered at around 3 am). Will I be able to win the shoes? I have my fingers crossed. I'm definitely in need of some new pair of shoes (though it's very unlikely that I'd actually wear the Coraline shoes even should I win it).

Fairytale always fascinated me. Fairytales are what we end up with when the gods and heroes pass away with their myths, the fantasy of everyday lives. Unlike what some people seem to think, fairytales are rarely if ever childish, unless the the creators of the fairytales actively try to sanitize it. The one word to describe the essence of fairytale would be 'shadow.' Exploration of the hidden motif beneath everyday events, an act that is inevitable as long as the humanity is capable of conscious thought and emotional response. 

Fairytales are ever present within the very fabric of human society, because the essences of fairytales are far beyond the simple archetypes of old witches in forests, locked doors and scary things roaming in the dark. Fairytale is the last resting place of any idea that once lived in the light, that's been aged and killed with the passage of time and lapse of civilizations. That aspect of fairytale as a graveyard of once widely held beliefs that had been relegated to the flow of time is most obvious in cultures that had been more or less taken over by the so called 'western ideas' in relatively recent years after the demise oftheir indigenous culture. Japanese and Mexican fairytales and the like are the most coted examples, but we needn't even go that far in search of exotic locations. We can simply look beneath the stories of cross-studded stories of kings and knights in Europe to find the most unexpected beliefs sustaining their meager life asfairytales in minds of the populace.

Once that grace and grandeur of the original myths had been stripped away with time, the old stories remain with us in its cold and naked forms since nothing holds them upon distant pedestals anymore. It descends to our level and stares into our eyes, whispering things into our ears that we have been so far away to hear in the past. When myths becomefairytales they be come feral. When myths speak of the giant monsters in the dark it speaks of the pantheons of gods and individual tidbits and family affairs of the whole clan complete with intrigues and jealousies. When the same myth becomes a fairytale it only speaks of the huge thing standing in the dark, it has no name, and it has no family. At that moment we realize that while we were busy counting the number of fights the gods went through in their shining armors during their heydays, the thing in the dark had been staring at us all along, silent and waiting. The moment of that realization is the moment that we realize the true depth and value offairytales , and that is the moment we begin to understand ourselves as not just animals born a few decades ago, but human beings with thousands of years of history behind us, with hearts too deep to fathom.