Mansur Ahmed

Coraline, which is directed by Henry Selick, is based upon a wonderfully dark book by Neil Gaiman, the man behind The Sandman graphic novels as well as many other fantasy works. Words like masterpiece or classic should usually be kept in their holsters and drawn only when they are absolutely imperative to a work of art’s description, when it is difficult to describe it with conventional thought processes. Coraline is an unusual film. I can tell you it’s in the same vain as Nightmare Before Christmas or Corpse Bride, both of which are connected to Henry Selick, but Coraline is apart from those works because it will touch viewers more deeply. Like the dreamscapes of Nightmare Before Christmas and Corpse Bride, this film is cultivated within a dark and gloomy tapestry, however it is about real people and that makes its relevance to us very powerful. Its primary audience is children, which will undoubtedly cause some to question Selick’s technique, but adults will be touched by it as well because a lot of the feelings implicitly discussed in Coraline will engender pangs from the universal wounds left by childhood.

I’m not surprised its being distributed by Focus Features because there’s no way a major commercial studio like Disney or Dreamworks would have backed it without forcing the filmmakers to alter the movie’s tone. It would have been an understandable move as this is a dark film even in comparison to adult motion pictures. Fans of Tim Burton, David Lynch, or Guillermo Del Toro will be in for a huge fix straight to the gloomy part of their psyche. It might even be safe to label Coraline a Gothic horror picture. But the trepidation it effectuates from us is not entirely due to anything visceral. Indeed, the images are scary at times, but we are more disturbed by the way this movie so freely peruses our fears on a very astute, psychological plane. Children who may be too young to relate to Coraline’s alienation with the world will only have to contend with the imaginatively frightening visuals. I think the formidable setting of a dark movie theater will heighten the experience for them. It’s not necessarily a bad thing. I personally would have loved to have watched Coraline when I was small. This is a very unique story intelligently translated to screen and its darkness may serve to create a healthy dichotomy in conjunction with all the commonplace, uninspired art children are exposed to.

There are surprises a plenty in Coraline so I’m not going to try and describe any of it. I will simply tell you a bit about Coraline herself. Like most her age, she finds it difficult to get along with grownups because they never seem to take her seriously. She is very outgoing, which nobody responds to, and her biggest issue with the world is that everyone mistakes her name for Caroline. Because of this and her charismatic personality, Coraline finds her life very drab until she discovers a door leading to a parallel world, and I’ll leave it at that. The story can be compared to Alice in Wonderland, except that Coraline has a bit more dimensionality to her than Alice. She is definitely a flawed heroine, even displaying some really annoying and downright bratty characteristics, but that’s what makes her unique and interesting. Her parents are loving, if distracted with their own lives, and it’s very easy to sympathize with Coraline’s disenchantment with them. Well, I found it easy. Children will find it easy as well and may even be able to recognize the irrationality of their own behavior, but what Coraline does best is showcase how poignantly difficult and magically lonely a period of life childhood really is. Watching Coraline may even cause adults to recall the pains and fears of growing up with a kind of serendipity.

It’s very difficult to describe in words exactly what I’m trying to say, which is why Henry Selick and Neil Gaiman don’t waste time clarifying a message with blatantly self-serving dialogue or sentimental exposition. What they do is far more difficult to accomplish, and that’s convey what they’re trying to say purely through the feelings their story conjures from within the viewer without succumbing to cliche. Despite Coraline’s darkness and gloom, the movie is still sentimental, but the sentimentality is far more personal and reserved wholly for the individual to decipher. That’s magic.