“Mirror Mirror” Offers
Fractured Fairy Tale
Reviewed by Shirrel Rhoades
My late friend Dr. Bruno Bettelheim wrote in “The Uses of Enchantment: The Meaning and Importance of Fairy Tales” that “only on repeated hearing of a fairy
tale … is a child able to profit fully from what the story has to offer him in
regard to understanding himself and his experience of the world.”
So
director Tarsem Singh (“Immortals,”
“The Cell”) is going to tell you the Snow White story again, this time in a
movie called “Mirror Mirror.”
This cinematic version is currently enchanting
audiences at the Tropic Cinema.
You know how it goes – kinda. A wicked sorceress
schemes to steal the throne from a raven-haired beauty known as Snow White.
Banished to the forest, the young girl falls in with a rebellious band of
little people (the Seven Dwarves) who transform her into a battle-ready
princess capable of winning back the kingdom from the conniving queen. And along the way she meets a handsome
prince.
Oscar-winner Julia Roberts (“Erin Brockovich”) portrays Queen Clementianna as being more
insecure than evil. Lily Collins (“The Blind Side”) – she’s the daughter of
musician Phil Collins – plays Snow White. And chisel-chin Army Hammer (“J. Edgar”)
joins them as the prince.
In
addition to the prerequisite seven diminutive actors, Nathan Lane, Sean Bean, and
Mare Winningham round out cast.
Don’t
confuse this movie with the forthcoming “Snow
White and the Huntsman,” starring Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, and
Chris Hemsworth. Fairy tales are all the rage. Remember last year’s “Red Riding
Hood” with Amanda Seyfried. And those recent TV shows, “Once Upon A Time” and
“Grimm.”
Austrian-born
child psychologist Bruno Bettelheim believed that fairy tales are essential for
the mental health of children. Later on, Persian-born psychiatrist-neurologist
Nossrat Peseschkian applied the
same criteria to adults. Peseschkian
points out how a story holds up a mirror to you. You observe the characters of
the story objectively from a safe distance, able to recognize traits that apply
to yourself.
“Mirror
Mirror,” as the movie’s title says.
Bettelheim
postulated that fairy tales function similarly to dreams. “As we wake up
refreshed from our dream, better able to meet the tasks of reality, so the
fairy story ends with the hero returning, or being returned to the real world, much
better able to master life,” he wrote.
Movies
serve a similar purpose in my estimation, a dreamlike storytelling medium that
allows us to work through the unconscious pressures of our lives.
When
my wife and I worked in the pressure-cooker publishing world in New York, we
found that a good action movie on Friday night allowed us to clear our heads, put
our tough workweek behind us, and escape to a flickering world where heroes
survived and bad guys got their due. Thus we didn’t have to go to work on
Monday morning with automatic weapons. Or poison apples.
srhoades@aol.com
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