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Mirror Mirror (2012)
Mirror, Mirror: a Visual Treat By Sadia Ashraf
Mirror, Mirror: a Visual Treat By Sadia Ashraf
Mirror, Mirror (2012) may not stimulate the gray matter but will certainly delight the eyes. Directed by Tarsem Singh, the movie employs his customary visual extravagance that is a gastronomic eye-feast, resembling his other films Cell (2000), The Immortals (2011) and The Fall (2006), where story is often sacrificed for the spectacle. Singh's trademark imagination overcomes the story in this surreal retelling of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
Singh is a true renaissance man who shows his Indian heritage in Mirror, Mirror infusing it with his western upbringing and merging it with his love of classical art. The anachronistic film jumps through time, language, architecture and attire as easily as a circus lion jumps through hoops of fire.
With disregard to an actual period setting, the film's architecture mixes the Baroque period with transitional décor in the queen's castle which has gigantic balconies overlooking bucolic and blue painted-by- Rubens-skies; Hollywood glamour style mirrored and crystal furniture; Rococo gilded opulence in its pillars, thrones and ceiling; and even Arabian style gold turrets.
The film relies on Flemish paintings for its imagery. The aristocratic class in the film seems derived from Van Dyck and Vermeer paintings while the working class dioramas seem to be the handiwork of Brueghel. The costumes— designed by the late Eiko Ishioka (who has worked on most of Singh's films) — are timeless masterpieces that are equally Vermeer as they are Dior and John Paul Gaultier. The gravity-defying, brightly hued, taffeta and silk creations might even earn Ishioka a posthumous Oscar nomination.
While its costumes have been universally admired, critics have bashed Mirror, Mirror's slim storyline and awkward screenplay making its box office debut no fairytale. The fairytale genre has become Hollywood's cherished new trend with successful TV shows such as Once Upon A Time and Grimm; successes like Tangled; a few misses like the rendition of Little Red Riding Hood; and the highly anticipated Snow White and the Huntsman that looks like an apocalyptic version of the tale.
Mirror, Mirror takes liberties with the original Grimm's fairytale, with a revisionist and female-empowered plot that transforms Snow White from being a helpless heroine who need rescuing, to a Jane Eyre-ish character who becomes emancipated, leaves the limited confines of the castle and learns the way of the world; ultimately rescuing the male protagonist— physical and spiritually. Lily Collins—slightly reminiscent of Audrey Hepburn and bearing no resemblance to her father Phil Collins— plays the congenial Snow White.
Snow White comes of age, when she encounters poverty and grim reality in the village. The political and economic parallels between reality and fable are evident in her discovery of back-breaking taxes levied at the common man and how the queen rules them with tactics of fear and suppression—not unlike America's war on terror. Snow White discovers that the exorbitant queen has been secretly crafting fear—with a monster she unleashes at will— to oppress the masses and then justifying the taxes as expenditure necessary for their security.
Julie Roberts displays a virtuoso ease with which she plays the affable, yet odious stepmother. Though carrying off the superlative costumes in dazzling backgrounds with queenly aplomb— she never quite convinces us that she is evil to the core, with her lighthearted bantering, incessantly humorous gaze, and a love-sick preoccupation with securing the attention of the handsome prince instead of a single-minded motivation to kill Snow White.
At one point, looking into the magic mirror, Roberts utters, "These are not wrinkles they are merely crinkles," as the film also aspires to critique a beauty industry that equates pain with attractiveness, and urges women to pump themselves with silicon and Botox. Roberts struggles in a painful contraption that squeezes her into a whalebone corset and undergoes agonizing procedures that include a face mask with bird feces and getting her lips plumped with bee stings while maggots, scorpions and snakes inject her with venomous cures.
As with most Hollywood actors playing European roles, Roberts vacillates between an artificial British accent and a befuddled American falsetto, though, she does deliver a few comical lines—like her rebuttal to Prince Alcott's extolling of Snow White's beauty: "Blah blah blah, her hair is not black, it's raven and she's 18 years old and her skin has never seen the sun, so of course it's good." The prince says "I think Snow White is the most beautiful woman in the whole world" and the queen quips, "Agree to disagree."
Armie Hammer—whose breakthrough role was playing the buff Winklevoss twins in The Social Network (2010)— plays the handsome prince Alcott in Mirror, Mirror. The plot tosses him back and forth between Snow white and the queen, depending on the amorous upper hand. In the film's subverting of the male-female protagonists' traditional roles, the prince is defeated by Snow White in verbal and actual sword play and becomes a human love-slave puppy to the queen.
The prince is also emasculated by the seven dwarfs in several skirmishes. They accost the landed gentry as highway bandits and are not hardworking miners as in the Disney version of Snow White. They are the ideal comical foils to the lackluster prince and will be enjoyed by children as Mirror, Mirror a rare family film. The film is supported by actors Nathan Lane who plays a butler/not-quite-evil henchman to the queen and Mare Winningham who is superb as a submissive and subversive servant.
While Mirror, Mirror may not be intellectually stimulating, but it is a fun caper and a visual treat the whole family can enjoy together.
Saving Face (2012)
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy Reflects on Oscar Win and What it Means for Pakistan
By Sadia Ashraf
Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy's Oscar Academy Award win for Pakistan last Sunday, a first for the country, is a bittersweet victory. While the country rejoices in the worldwide recognition of an Oscar for Saving Face as a Documentary Short, the topic of the film — women who are the victims of acid burning — highlights a dark problem in the struggle for female emancipation in Pakistan.
Fitting then, that Obaid-Chinoy dedicated her Oscar to that effort in her acceptance speech: "All the women in Pakistan working for change, don't give up on your dreams, this one is for you."
On one hand, while Pakistan produces educated, enlightened and talented females like Obaid-Chinoy, it also bears witness to victims of acid throwing, like 25-year-old Rukhsana, who is featured in the documentary. Two days before the Academy Awards, I interviewed Obaid-Chinoy, the film's director Daniel Junge and Dr. Mohammad Jawad, whose work is featured in the film, at a pre-Oscar celebration hosted by Pakistan's Los Angeles Consular General, Riffat Masood. Our conversation revealed the complexity of pessimism and hope in Pakistan.
"I have always felt that if you are educated and empowered you can become the voice for those that are marginalized and disenfranchised," said Obaid-Chinoy. The variations that can produce such juxtaposed lives — in a developing country like Pakistan—are the stratum of education, social milieu and background.
Obaid-Chinoy said that despite the problems women in Pakistan face, she felt optimistic. "We have a strong feminine presence: female lawyers and legislators fighting on behalf of these women, who hear the testimonies, write the bills and get them passed in parliament. This shows no matter where we come from in Pakistan, there are people working to make it a more tolerant society," she said.
In 2010, Junge heard British Pakistani plastic surgeon, Dr. Jawad talking to BBC Radio about surgery on acid victims. When Junge went to Pakistan to catalogue the doctor's story, the trip became the germination of collaboration between him and Obaid-Chinoy. Saving Face documents the reconstructive work of the Dr. Jawad on some of his patients who are victims of acid attacks in Pakistan. It also focuses on the stories of Rukhsana and Zakia and their efforts to overcome the legal, social and psychological repercussions of that violence.
Obaid-Chinoy also won an Emmy award for her documentary, Taliban Generation (2010) and is the first non-American to win the prestigious Livingston Award for Young Journalists. She said that her "desire to help others" has guided her trajectory as a Pakistani filmmaker, adding that "wherever I have made films around the world, the topics I have chosen are all about giving a voice to the voiceless."
Pakistan is Addressing Its Problems At a Saving Face film screening in Pomona College in Pomona, California one day after the Oscar win, Daniel Junge, the documentary's Colorado- based director, talked to me about the impact of the win as he held his golden statue. "Pakistan is a country too easily summed up by the international media in simple terms, it is by far the most complex place I have been to," he said.
I asked him if this film would reinforce some of those narrow views. He said that he "felt people would come to the movie" with a "certain bias." But, film viewers "owe it to the documentary film genre to come with open eyes and realize the film is about Pakistanis addressing their problems, not just a showcase of problems."
This reinforced what Obaid-Chinoy said earlier, that as an "emancipated woman" who enjoyed "liberties," she produced the documentary because it perturbed her that "many other women don't have that freedom." There are 100 reported cases of female acid attacks in Pakistan annually, yet it is a universal problem with pockets prevailing in South Asia, South America and Africa. Dr. Jawad initiated cutting edge techniques of burn treatment in the reconstruction of Katie Piper — a British model who had sulphuric acid thrown on her face by a stalker in 2008.
I asked Dr. Jawad if female victimization is a social predicament spreading in developing countries — regardless of religion and culture. He said with characteristic British humor, "In Pakistan, this is a man- made disease — not a religious phenomenon. By addressing it and giving the idiotic perpetrators a swift kick in the rear, some hope can exist." He went on to clarify that the core causes of acid throwing are poverty, illiteracy and ignorance.
Hope does exist amid the agony. Saving Face highlights the mêlée for women's rights in Pakistan by activists, lawyers, journalists and politicians like Marvi Memon. The movement led Pakistan's parliament to pass two bills — the Acid Control and Acid Crime Prevention Laws — in December of 2011. These bills enforce imprisonment and heavy fines on the perpetrators of these crimes. Obaid-Chinoy said that the passing of the bills is a testament that "the documentary is really a story about how educated women can help underprivileged women in Pakistan."
At the Pomona College viewing of Saving Face, held one day after the film's Oscar win, the auditorium was bursting at the seams. The audience reacted visibly and verbally to the documentary: They gasped at the horrific stories of Rukhsana and Zakia; laughed at Dr. Jawad's flippant quips; snorted when the perpetrators were interviewed and cheered at the sentencing of one of the criminals, who received two consecutive life sentences for acid throwing. At one point in the film, there was a palpable lump-in-the-throat silence when Dr. Jawad stopped an interview with a victim of acid throwing, took off his foggy glasses and wiped his eyes. It was therapeutic and promising.
Visit the Acid Prevention Foundation, a non-for-profit featured in Saving Face. Sadia Ashraf is a Los Angeles-based writer and public relations specialist. This article published in Patheos, Illume, All Voices & Latinoweekly Review.