Friend and colleague Rachel Kennedy introduced me to the critical concept of the female gothic last fall, a phrase coined by scholar Ellen Moers thirty years ago. While subsequent debate has concerned whether this subgenre is defined by the author’s gender, Rachel sided with those who define it in terms of the protagonist’s gender, and applied it to Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth [2006]: a young female heroine embarks on a fantastic voyage of self-discovery in a gothic house. A similar narrative and visual/thematic sophistication informs the latest 3-D release, Coraline.
Director Henry Selick, best known as the director of Tim Burton’s The Nightmare Before Christmas [1993], has adapted Neil Gaiman’s 1992 novella into a rich, entertaining film with lush visual and aural textures. While Selick has used computer-generated imagery in the past, Coraline is, astonishingly, made with stop-action animation, and demonstrates a deep affection for hand crafts onscreen and off. The score by Bruno Coulas and They Might Be Giants is subtle and perfectly suited – if you can see Coraline at a day and time when the theater is not full of kids, you’ll be glad.
And, if possible, do see it in Real D. As 3-D movies go, Coraline is only a distant cousin of those which use 3-D effects for cheap thrills [stay through the end of the closing credits, though]. It is more like Alfred Hitchcock’s Dial M for Murder [1954], using the special effect to reinforce visual and thematic elements already woven into the text’s fabric. There’s an overhead shot near the end with a chandelier in the foreground which looks like a direct homage to Dial M, and hints of The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, and other fantasy classics abound. The unity of visual and thematic elements involving the circus, eyes, and fabric crafts raise Coraline to the realm of popular entertainment which also functions as fine art.
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