|
Chances
are, dear reader, if you haven't heard of Neil Gaiman, you've
been living under a rock. He is, after all, the highly celebrated
author behind American Gods, Stardust, and the
Sandman graphic novels. He also co-wrote the screenplay
for last year's 3-D Beowulf movie…though that may not
be a strong selling point for literary purists, so we will
ignore that for now.
Gaiman's
next foray into 3-D animated movies, however, is of his own
creation: the stop-motion adaptation of his award-winning
children's book Coraline. Should the film's director
Henry Selznick (The Nightmare Before Christmas) remain
true to the original story, the film ought to be a dark but
glorious adventure.
The book
begins almost Roald Dahl-like, with the title character the
lone child in a group of neglectful adults. Plucky, imaginative
Coraline has recently moved into a large, old house that has
been quartered into an odd four-flat apartment complex. Her
parents work on their computers all day, ignore her attempts
at individuality, and serve "recipes" for dinner such as leek
and potato stew with a tarragon garnish and melted Gruyère
cheese. Her eccentric upstairs neighbors consist of two retired
actresses who love Highland terriers and an old man training
a mouse circus—all three characters consistently call
her Caroline.
While
exploring her apartment one day, Coraline discovers a door
joining her flat to the unoccupied one next door. Though she
knows that the doorway has been bricked over, Coraline opens
the door to discover a flat that seems to be the mirror image
of her own, complete with an "other mother" and an "other
father," who look like deformed versions of her own parents
and have black buttons for eyes.
In an
effort to keep her with them, these other parents dote on
Coraline, giving her everything Coraline's real parents have
not: attention, affection, fun, and regular foods. For a while,
Coraline seems contented to stay and explore the surrealism
of what seems like a darker, microcosmic version of Wonderland,
complete with a talking cat and musical animals. However,
when Coraline decides to return to her real world, her other
mother kidnaps Coraline's real parents, and Coraline must
return to the sinister other world to save them.
As a
story alone, Coraline is creepy but thrilling-a slick,
well-crafted tale worthy of becoming a children's classic.
But with the macabre black and white artwork of Dave McKean
(who also collaborated with Gaiman on The Sandman and
the movie MirrorMask), Coraline receives added
depth and becomes the sort of book that would scare elementary
school-aged children—and, of course, that's exactly what
kids love about it. Though the movie promises to be more of
a mainstream, Tim Burton-like production than McKean's vision,
one hopes that the darkness and the thrills of Gaiman's original
work stay wonderfully intact.
(March,
2008)
|
