(Warning: Spoilers)

The most recent ad promoting Henry Selick’s adaptation of Coraline, Neil Gaiman’s award-winning book, hails it as “the best reviewed movie of the year”. The year is young but it’s a fact that the film has received highest marks from many prominent print-media critics. Almost invariably, those judgments are based on its formal qualities and the viewer’s ability to escape into its wondrous, magical realms. Indeed, the sensorial experience afforded the viewer by a blend of ancient craftsmanship, stop-motion animation, and 21st century 3D technology is entrancing. For instance, Coraline’s ability to convey the texture of things like sand, cloth and fog is unparalleled. A beautiful scene that incorporates the sky from Vincent Van Gogh’s "Starry Night" is characteristic of the film’s inspired and imaginative visual design.

However, if a fantastic film, or any film for that matter, is to attain the potential intrinsic to the medium, then it must reflect on the conditions of being a person in the here-and-now. The story Gaiman concocted provides ample opportunities to do so. Coraline’s family has just relocated. Our prepubescent everygirl finds her new digs uninteresting and complains of being bored. She is frustrated by her parents’ inability or unwillingness to cater to her desires and pay attention to her. In a manner reminiscent of many classics of literature aimed primarily at youth, Coraline enters an alternative universe. This one is populated by doppelgangers of her parents and her new neighbors. The other-parents are particularly alluring in that they don’t have deadlines to meet or preoccupations to keep them from regaling Coraline with whatever she may wish. They do have black buttons for eyes but their seductive powers are strong enough to allay any apprehensions. So Coraline makes a return visit. The dream turns into a nightmare and the other-mother’s nefarious scheme becomes evident. She wants to turn Coraline into an “other” so she kidnaps and hides her real parents to keep her from leaving. At the surface level, Coraline illustrates maxims like “the grass is always greener on the other side” and “be careful what you wish for”. But there are deeper currents in the narrative involving complex issues.

From a feminist perspective, it’s interesting to note that Coraline’s parents work and share the household chores and that the character who ultimately stands for evil plays a traditional mothering role admirably. Coraline links the mother doppelganger to stereotypical, pre-feminist notions of womanhood and maternity. The reading is complicated by the fact that the other-father is thoroughly impotent; merely one of the many artifacts constructed by the other-mother to entice Coraline.

From a developmental perspective, Coraline finds herself preoccupied with achieving individuation and a strong sense of personal identity. She wants to wear a particular pair of gloves to school which would allow her to stand out among her peers and she is mortified by being called by the wrong name. A nameless cat that becomes her recurrent companion, the one character that doesn’t have a double, opines that “you people need names because you don’t know who you are”. Coraline must find defining personal qualities so that she doesn’t need colorful gloves to be acknowledged. She becomes remarkable because of her courage to face her fears and defeat the stifling other-mother and because of her compassion towards the three ghost children trapped in a soulless limbo.

Coraline is initially wedded to a childish notion that it’s her parents’ responsibility to make her life interesting. As the narrative unfolds, Coraline increasingly develops self-reliance and an appreciation for things in her real world. Of equal importance, she learns to recognize and accept her parents’ limitations as they remain oblivious to the fact that she has saved their lives. At the conclusion, she doesn’t need to be treated like a heroine because their love is plenty.

It’s lamentable that Coraline makes it such a chore to extract these meanings. The problem resides in Mr. Selick’s inconsistent script, his first. His previous directorial efforts, such as The Nightmare before Christmas and James and the Giant Peach, benefit from the involvement of accomplished screenwriters. Coraline’s script often seems subservient to audiovisual spectacle and audience demographics at the expense of storytelling and narrative dexterity. For instance, the decision to invent a new character, a kid named Wybie, seems motivated solely by the belief that the boys in the audience need a gender-appropriate object of identification. His participation in the defeat of the other-mother means Coraline must share the spotlight with him. This simply doesn’t seem fair after she overcomes all the obstacles placed in front of her. Moreover, the diminished role of the three ghost kids in the film detracts from the pathos that their presence generates in the novel. The best reviewed film of 2009 has many unique virtues and redeeming features, yet I find myself lamenting its failure to become the instant classic or masterpiece it could have been.

Oscar Jubis
17 February 2009