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MirrorMask is one of my favorite movies ever; but then I am a sucker for almost anything Gaiman or McKean have ever done, and I got very excited when I realized there was a suit-up scene in it. And not only that, but it is one of the most interesting and pivotal scenes in the movie as well.

MirrorMask is a modern fairy-tale in the vein of The Wizard of Oz (1939), Labyrinth (1986), or Pan’s Labyrinth (2006). Helena must travel through a dream world of her own creation to come to terms with her mother’s illness, her father’s failing business, and her own place in the world as she grows up; all played out through her adventure to save a white queen and her world from a growing evil shadow. The story is artfully crafted on so many levels, and I find new enlightening details every time I watch it (as this past time I realized how the architecture of the buildings across both worlds mimic each other and what that shows about her feelings about them) – but that is why I like Gaiman and McKean’s work so much.

This suit-up scene is counter to most suit-up scenes in a few important ways. This is the lowest point for Helena; she has been betrayed by her only compatriot on this journey, captured by the enemy Queen of Shadows, and here forced to lose her identity and become what she has been struggling against this whole time. This is not a scene of the hero rising to the occasion and preparing for the final confrontation, but rather the reverse; she succumbs to desperation and is finally lost to the world. Likewise, she is not an active participant, but rather simply allowing the suit-up to take place, and those objects she acquires here are simply of symbolic importance, they do not effect the plot beyond their metaphoric meaning.

She is deposited into a room of music box dolls that hypnotize and entice her, dressing her up to the part she must now play; that of the Queen of Shadows errant daughter, to be loved through control and fear… this is after all a coming of age piece. These clockwork matrons adorn her with a black dress and gloves; dark eye-shadow, lipstick and fingernail polish; they do her hair up and as a final symbolic touch, her eyes become completely blacked out, all the while caressing her as a mother should, as she most desires at this point in the story.

When life is at its hardest we long for that reassuring touch that only a mother’s love can give; but here it is so obviously wrong and twisted, given not as affection but control, and not even from the Queen who would claim to be a mother, but from wind-up robots. And it works, because it is the only “help” she is being offered at this point, and there is no reason to hope any longer. Helena settles for what she can get and plays the part of the obedient child to a cruel unloving Queen.

The CG here, drawn from Dave McKean and Hourglass Studios, artfully mastered by The Jim Henson Company is top notch. Stephanie Leonidas’s performance suffers a little from her being a young actress dealing with CG situations, but is otherwise acceptable. The crowning touch of this scene for me is definitely Iain Ballamy’s creepy-cool arrangement of Bacharach’s “Close to You”, which if nothing else, his score is a great reason to watch this movie. But then so is McKean’s art design… and Gaiman’s writing.