Film: "In the Mirror" Retells Snow White In An Age of Selfies and Social Media

The most frustrating thing about In The Mirror is that we have no idea when we'll be able to see this intriguing retelling of the fairy tale. In this time of a pandemic, with social-distancing and lockdowns, when we are forced to experience much of life outside our homes through a lens, it's very timely to see a fairy tale being retold with this focus. (The film is, however, Latvia's official Academy Awards selection for the coming year, so fingers crossed it will be available for the general public to see somewhere online soon.)

The award-winning, Latvian film director, Laila Pakalnina, who also wrote and produced the film, had the idea of retelling Snow White through the lens - literally - of the selfie, after spending a lot of time getting messages from her distanced daughter and realizing its potential as a very different form for creating a feature film. Pakalnina also realized that using the communication form of social media - while generally thought of as a film and photography medium - is actually very different from film in general and provides a very unique set of technical challenges to create film quality selfie-stylizations, as well as making for a very interesting reflection of current societal values - a theme that dovetails perfectly with Snow White. 

From an interview with Cineuropa:

Cineuropa: How did you start developing In the Mirror?
Laila Pakalniņa: At first, I had the idea of exploring selfies as a form. Somehow, my daughter started communicating with me through selfies – she wasn't sending me still portraits, but short video messages. Then I understood there was something to dig into there. But working with mobiles wouldn't have been interesting enough for me. For sure, I knew I needed professional cameras, horizontal framing and, most probably, anamorphic lenses because I like to work on the mise-en-scène, not just on someone's close-up. I realised it was a very interesting form that could be used to communicate and show people the world through a self-portrait. The next idea that came to me was a fairy tale, Snow White. I somehow realised that what this stepmother was talking to was a mirror, so it was already a selfie! I wanted to offer that tool to all of my characters

Using selfie-culture for a narrative is just as much about what the screens capture in the images as it is about what's actually being said in any dialogue, perhaps even more so, and it requires a completely different mindset and approach from regular filmmaking. It's a bold experimental film, playful and contemporary, which requires the audience to give up their usual way of watching movies and to see the story unfold largely via "selfie shots" (think stills/photos as well as short Tik-Tok-length videos) with the actors talking directly to the camera, but even more intimately than one would see in a documentary. In this film, the actors were required to be in contact with the camera (and the Director of Photography), almost hugging it as they delivered their lines or hit their marks, or, for example in the case of running, having the camera attached to them.

It effectively uses the stark contrast (and fairy tale appropriate) colors of black and white, all while the actors deliver their dialogue as directly to the audience as anything ever done before. There's no doubt the audience is being made to feel uncomfortable on purpose, with the high stylization, but it underscores the story it's telling so very well.

From the Cineuropa interview, again, essentially commenting on how black and white is a great shorthand for retelling a fairy tale in film:

What about the choice of filming it in black and white?
Usually, when you film in black and white, it's easier to organise framing, as it's not that chaotic. We weren't looking for an easy way to do things, though. But this is a fairy tale, and black and white leaves the viewers some room for fantasy. I believe that when you watch something shot in black and white, perhaps you see it as it is for the first few minutes, but then you can unleash your imagination and see the colours.

Take a look at the trailer - and remember: there will be selfies! (it takes a bit of an adjustment on first viewing):

Pakalnina also chose to set her contemporary take in a gym, of all places, which, at first, sounds absurd, until you begin to realize all the implications of fitness, body image, youth-obsessed culture, and our continual preoccupation with self-image now that smartphones and social media are central to much of society. The cast she chose is full of athletes, dancers, body-builders, extreme sports players, and other non-professionals, all making for a "carnivalesque" atmosphere. Snow White herself is played by Elza Leimane, a renowned prima-ballerina in Latvia, something Pakalina says (in her Q&A for the film festival) was invaluable in having to take her challenging and very unusual direction for this approach to filming.

In The Mirror is billed as a darkly comic fable, which has shown to make for lively screenings at festivals. Here are some notes from reviewer Stephen Dalton at The Hollywood Reporter, who attended the Black Nights Festival in Tallinn, a.k.a. PÖFF24 (which we assume was social distanced, considering all the interviews and presentations were done via zoom and similar tech - something Pakalina commented on as being oddly appropriate and on theme when being interviewed!):

Smartly using a 200-year-old folklore story to satirize the narcissism and body fascism of our social media-saturated age, it consistently breaks the fourth wall in witty and inventive ways.

... this Latvian-Lithuanian film (Ed. - created with English subtitles) is mostly shot on agile hand-held cameras and clothed in lustrous monochrome visuals. Even if the storytelling is disjointed at times, In the Mirror never looks less than ravishing, while kinetic editing and a pulsing techno score help to keep energy levels at a maximum.

This foray into fairy tales is not the first for filmmaker Pakalnina. The summary on the PÖFF24 festival film site explains a little more of her approach to combining tales with social commentary:

Fairy-tales are stories which we are told as children and which we recognise in all sorts of characters around us as adults.

With her creative works which determinedly experiment with the language of film and the narrative, director and screenwriter Laila Pakalniņa has become renowned both at film festivals far away and right here at PÖFF last year with her documentary "The Spoon". Her film "The Shoe" intertwined fairy-tales with social criticism at Cannes as early as in 1998. After "Cinderella", she this time takes on "Snow White" We can all remember the evil stepmother whose sinister nature manifested in boundless self-admiration as she demanded daily praise from her reflection? Today, people talk to their reflection regularly multiple times more than the evil stepmother ever did throughout the entire fairy-tale.

...In this story, everyone talks to their reflection, which playfully comes from the perspective of the viewer. What does a person who only looks at himself see and what goes unnoticed on the background of all that? "In the Mirror" proposes answers at a high artistic level, while also daring to use the piquancy of absurd humour.

 And expanding a little on how the filmmaking style reflects the tale, in the review from THR:

Pakalnina and her cinematographer Gints Berzins consistently conjure up arrestingly surreal images: a team of strongmen lugging a burning car through a blizzard, a man asleep under a giant rock, the underside of a squirrel perched on a glass roof. Even when they make scant narrative sense, these quirky tableaux serve as dreamlike symbols in the spirit of Fellini, David Lynch or Sally Potter. Berzins also makes dynamic use of depth of field, shifting dramatic emphasis by switching from crisp to blurry focus. But most of the film's striking close-ups were actually shot by the actors themselves using digital cameras mounted on a custom “selfie stick,” a bold new kind of collective collaboration. 

The film reportedly follows the fairy tale narrative fairly closely but it's more how it's told that surprises and makes it fresh, rather than how the plot is modernized. Here's an example of how the tale is told via Cineuropa:

Overall, the piece works on two levels. On the one hand, it arouses the viewer’s curiosity to find out how certain aspects of the original fairy tale will be staged (and manipulated) within the bizarre characters’ world; on the other, it prompts an obvious reflection on the pervasive role of smartphones in our life, ready to document every single moment (even a successful round of burpees), to ramp up our levels of narcissism and to make our emotions appear more spectacular. In this respect, one of the initial scenes – the one set at the funeral following Snow White’s mother’s passing – is a good example of said dichotomy, as we see the father filming his own despair with the coffin in the background, followed by a number of relatives and acquaintances approaching him one after another and almost glad to be in the frame.

The Q&A with the filmmaker (spoken in English for PÖFF) is definitely worth a watch. Pakalnina explains her inspiration and challenges in creating a film this way, which is unusual at least, and possibly groundbreaking, and provides much food for thought. It certainly makes us want to hunt down her previous reworking of a fairy tale in The Shoe*. Scroll to the bottom of the Festival page and hit the play button under the Q&A with the filmmaker (right above the social media icon links). 

(For extra-interested fairy tale film-buffs and filmmakers among our readers, click HERE for a brief, but informative, behind-the-scenes peek at the filmmaking on Instagram. We also recommend reading the rest of the Cineuropa interview for specific filmmaking techniques used for the "selfie-aesthetics".)

Good news for US audiences: Los Angeles-based Oration Films signed up world sales rights ahead of the film's Tallinn premiere. We'll be keeping an eye out for this one!

* DVD with English subtitles available for purchase in the US! Summary of the film HERE along with an interesting interview with Writer-Director Laila Pakalnina, and her very different Cinderella.

Fellini's 'Pinocchio' and Other Unfilmed Fairy Tales

                 
In the wake of the update on Disney's live-action Pinocchio getting a new director (see HERE for the quick news post), we thought it about time we finish this archived draft and give you some more Pinocchio news you might not have been aware of.

Did you know Roberto Benigni, who went from wowing the world with his film, Life is Beautiful to freaking everyone out with his Pinocchio, originally talked with Fellini about making Pinocchio, with himself (Benigni) as the lead?
   
While the Benigni Pinocchio film flopped, it did return the Italian sense of comedy to the story and there is a strong sense - or at least, various homages - to Fellini throughout. Perhaps it flopped partly because it didn't translate well to English (and the actual dubbing into English certainly did much more harm than good!) but in putting Pinocchio on film, Benigni did little more than try to remain faithful to Collodi (many would say "too faithful") and never brought a fresh filmic sensibility to the story, so that it would work in the different medium (ie. film, as opposed to the original, which was a serialized story). Fellini, though, had quite different plans for his version, which unfortunately never came to be.

Would it have been better, as in better received and a better-made film? Who's to say. The trouble with making Pinocchio 'a real boy', literally, is that the character, and his journey and stories, easily become the stuff of nightmares. the very least that can be assumed is that it would have been 'Fellini-esque' and therefore a very, very different result.
       
Here's an extract from the book I, Fellini by Federico Fellini, Charlotte Chandler (1994*), describing his love for Collodi's Pinocchio, a little of what he had hoped to do with the story (but never did) and how he felt about fairy tales in general:

A film I have always wanted to make is Collodi's Pinocchio. it would be different from the Disney version. in my Pinocchio, every time the marionette said something untrue to a woman, it would not be his nose that grew. 

When I was little, a book seemed to be something to throw at your brother... When I was eight or nine years old, I had my first happy meeting with a book that became a good friend to me throughout my life - Pinocchio. It's not just a wonderful book, but it's one of the great books. I feel that it has had an enormous influence on me. It was the beautiful pictures which first caught my attention. It was the way I wished I could draw. 

Through Pinocchio, I learned I could love a book, that a book could offer a magical experience, and this was, as it turned out, not just a book for childhood, but one that could be read forever, I have read it several times in my life since my early childhood discovery.
The end of the book is the poorest part because Carlo Collodi, as a nineteenth-century man, moralizes when the puppet becomes a boy. It is sad because, losing his marionettehood, Pinocchio loses his childhood, the marvelous life of knowing animals and magic, in return for becoming a good, conforming idiot. 

                       

Pinocchio was born in Romagna, just like me. I wanted to make the story as Collodi intended it, with live actors, but in the spirit of the great Chiostri illustrations. When I was young, I used to practice drawing by trying to copy those drawings, but I could never achieve what Chiostri did. I had many ideas for showing Pinocchio in the Country of Toys in the film I would make. 

Fellini's self-portrait/caricature
with Ginger and Fred

I did not identify with Pinocchio, but with Gepetto. Creating Pinocchio was like making a film. I could see the relationship between Gepetto's carving out Pinocchio and my carving out a film. Gepetto was making the marionette from a piece of wood, but little did he know that soon he would not be in control. With every chip he carved away, Pinocchio was becoming more. It is exactly the way I feel when I am directing a film, as the film starts to direct me. Gepetto though he was the one in charge, but the more he carved, the further he got away from it. 

Pinocchio was one of my favorite friends. If I could have made the film, with live people as I wanted to do, I would like to have played the part of Gepetto, and there was only one perfect actor to play Pinocchio - Giulietta**. 

I have always been fascinated by the fairy tales of Charles Perrault and Hans Christian Andersen. Imagine - "Rapunzel." "The Princess and the Pea," "The Littel Mermaid"! I would love to bring those fairy tales to the screen. I have this vision of the princess there in her nightdress, so uncomfortable and unable to sleep, on top of a mountain of mattresses, not realizing that it is a pea under the bottom of the first mattress that is the cause of her distress. The scene is so developed in my mind that sometimes I feel I have already made the film. Poor romantic little mermaid who gives all for love, yet we understand, because each of us searches throughout life for love. "The Emperor's New Clothes" is such a profound concept. Fairy tales are one of the greatest expressions of man by men. Another reason I was attracted to Jung was his revealing interpretation of fairy tales as part of our subconscious history. 

Life is a combination of magic and pasta, of fantasy and of reality. Films are the magic, and pasta is the reality, or is it the other way around? I have never been very good at distinguishing between what is real and what is not..."

         
And here is another extract from an interview with Rolling Stone, titled Fellini's Language Of Dreams (referencing his ENORMOUS sketch and notebook, some of which can be seen online):

RS: Aside from the circus and the artists Of Rimini, what else influenced you creatively as a child? 

Fellini: Fairy tales. My grandmother used to tell them to me. She was a farmer, a peasant, and her stories ‑ since she lived in the country and was surrounded by animals ‑ always concerned horses, cats, owls, bats. So we grew up to respect and be very curious about them. And still today, when I eat a chicken, I'm afraid that suddenly it will become a prince once it's inside me! [Laughing] I've always had ‑and still have‑ this feeling. 

       

Also, when I was eight or nine, Pinocchio: The Story of a Puppet was an enormous influence. It isn't just a wonderful book, for me it's one of the great books ‑ equal to Homer's Odyssey and Kafka's The Trial. And for my generation, it was our first happy encounter with a book. When you're small, a book is something very strange that belongs to the world of adults ‑ something that has to do with school, something that takes away your freedom ‑ unless there are beautiful pictures inside. And mostly it was something you could throw at your brother when you were fighting [laughing). But ultimately, it was something that didn't belong to you. The encounter with Pinocchio was like coming upon a magical object ‑ it was a big bridge between life and culture ‑ so it had a special meaning, almost exorcistic. 

                   

Now the author, Carlo Collodi, lived in the nineteenth century, so he had to conclude the book in a certain moralistic way. It ends with the transformation of the puppet into a boy. That, however, is the least interesting, and even the saddest part of the book. But, of course, it's true that we all lose the magical, childhood, Pinocchio part of our being ‑ being in touch with animals, with the night; with mystery ...in contact with life the way it should be. And with this loss, we become good idiots, good students, good husbands, good citizens. 

Pinocchio is a marvelous book because you can read it forever ‑ when you're a child, when you're young, when you're old. It has the simplicity of the Bible and lacks all presumptuous consciousness. And, indeed, it really is a work of magic. You can open it like a book of oracles, readjust one line, and it will help you. All your doubts and problems find an answer on those pages.

                                 
We think we will never quite be able to think about Pinocchio again, without remembering Fellini and his enthusiasm. It certainly will make us look at Fellini films a little differently too.

A little sidebar on the current 'Pinocchio' news to end: it should be noted, despite all this discussion of Collodi's serial story and the difficulties of translating the Italian sensibility of those stories for a non-European understanding (or affection), the live-action version of Pinocchio coming from Disney is not a remake of Collodi's book, but of the Disney classic animated film, so it will likely be even further removed from its origin in that sense. Not that, that is necessarily a bad thing. It just makes it different. That the film will be made in this era (2018 on), with the current social US American climate, in combination with the resurgence of interest in tale origins and research (such a the wonderful  #FolkloreThursday phenomenon), means this version-to-be still has many possibilities. Though intended, at pitch time, as a straight remake of the 1940 film, it's been the 'revisioning' of the classic stories (such as 'Maleficent' and Branagh's 'Cinderella' that have been most successful across the board - critically as well as in combination with popularity) that have made the most difference to how society is now viewing these tales. It will be an interesting case study either way.

NOTE: All illustrations, apart from Fellini's self-caricature, are by Fellini'/s favorite Pinocchio illustrator, Carlo Chiostri.

* Fellini was interviewed, with it also being tape recorded for his exact words, in 1980 and the book was originally published after his death (1993) in German as Ich, Fellini. Most of the book is written/related in Fellini's words.
**Giulietta was Fellini's wife.

Art Film: A Post-Truth Pinocchio In Venice

That title. We can't decide if it's ironic or tautological, nevertheless, Pinocchio - known the world over for his lies and the biggest tell on the planet - is having a revival, of sorts.

While Pinocchio has been associated with (almost) every President in the US (in fact, someone could probably create a book of Pinocchio POTUS', there have been so many images made with the telling long nose), our current era is more concerned in associating Pinocchio with fake news, specifically, fake news originating from the office of the Presidency (whether POTUS himself or his staff and entourage). With all the 'alternative facts' and 'post-truths' still constantly barraging the news and media, Pinocchio is fast becoming the poster boy for US politics (no matter which 'side' you take) and he, President of Fake News Pinocchio is cropping up more and more in writing, cartoons and contemporary works of art and film.

One of the most recent appearances is in a festival film, titled "Spite Your Face: A Dark Venetian Fairytale", by artist and filmmaker Rachel Maclean, where alt-Pinocchio is essentially displayed in a de-consecrated church in Venice, for the 57th Venice Biennale, a unique contest, "like the Eurovision song contest for art. People represent their countries." 

Fittingly, the film was created in a large, portrait format -something unusual, even for art films, and the constant impression that you're looking at a portrait, reinforces the sense of Pinocchio's importance - to himself and to those watching.

We've assembled a partial synopsis by combining two sources (both cited after their extracts):

Spite Your Face, transforms the 19th century Italian tale of a wooden puppet who wants to be a real boy into a dark and disturbing satire of the era of celebrity, fake news and reality television... and Maclean plays all the characters herself, (aided by) costumes elaborate costumes and the help of prosthetic designer Kristyan Mallett, who has worked on the Harry Potter movie franchise.

The film tells the rags to riches story of an urchin called Pic. His life is transformed when he is catapulted into "The World Above", a consumer heaven where money equals power. (BBC News)

Pic (full name Pinocchio Gepetto) is a street kid in a grey, hopeless world. He makes a wish on an iPad in the Other World Offerings temple – a digital recreation of the Chiesa di Santa Caterina – and finds himself transported by the blessing of a fairy godmother / Virgin Mary figure to a golden heaven where (through the application of a perfume named Truth) he is able to become a gilded hero punting rubbish perfume (named Untruth) to the masses. 

Standing atop a golden plinth, Pic rants and raves to an adoring crowd. "Smell that? This place used to smell great. Now it stinks. The facts aren't known because the media don't report them." (TheSkinny - we recommend reading their whole article)

As the face of a perfume brand called Untruth, Pic becomes a rich and famous media personality, and a political demagogue, at the expense of his ethics and happiness. 

... "I was interested in how lies had played out in the Brexit campaign and the Trump campaign. Journalism exposed the lies but that didn't affect the outcome. I was interested in how democracy works. We are less rational than we like to think we are and driven by belief systems." (said Maclean - BBC News again) 

Venice is a city that still exudes luxury. Things glint and glitter, look expensive, of high status, and that adds to the setting of Pic, aka, alt-Pinocchio's journey. Perhaps the fact that it was written 'in situ' helped capture that.

The Herald (Scotland) got a preview of the film, and additional comments by Maclean are so very relevant, we had to include an excerpt to give readers a better idea of why this film has caught so many people's attention:

The Herald had a preview of the film - which also features song, satire, special effects and parody - and afterwards Ms Maclean said of the disturbing assault scene: "I've been disturbed and troubled by the recent rise and confidence in misogyny, the rise in anti-feminism, and reactionary attitudes to feminism, and that coupled with a feeling that we are immune, as a culture, to violence against women in images and the exploitation of women, images of women's bodies used to sell perfume or cars, and it is so ingrained we are not shocked by it anymore. I wanted the film to feel jarring, to make it uncomfortable and difficult to watch, and didn't want it so sit at that level of immunity." 

The film does not directly make reference to either Trump or Brexit, but the artist said: "I was processing a lot of the sense of how these lazy lies that were used through the Brexit campaign and the Trump campaign, and that didn't effect the result. 

"I got interested in how difficult it is to penetrate a narrative that has gained political currency, and how easy it is to use lies to substantiate ideas that already have currency. 

"The rags-to-riches tale is so much in our culture, you see it in things such as Britain's Got Talent...I was inspired by how compassion-less those [rags to riches] narratives are, and generate a lack of compassion for other people's suffering."

And so Pinocchio meets Cinderella - and neither look good because of it.

We became even more interested in how this film came to be, knowing it had its genesis well before Trump campaigned or before Brexit rose its head. We found that fairy tales were always a part of her exploration but things evolved quite differently when finishing writing it at the end of 2017.

From TheArtNewspaper:

...Maclean anticipated (the film) might be an extension of her earlier films and photographs exploring fantastical, fairy-tale and clichéd images of Scottish identity, The Lion and the Unicorn and I ♥ Scotland. Presciently, the latter, made in 2013, included a Donald Trump-like figure. Back then he was merely symbolic of corporate greed—a golf-club wielding, saltire-faced, frightwig-sporting ogre, enacted, like all the figures in her work, by Maclean herself.  

But in early December, Maclean visited Venice and her ideas shifted: Spite Your Face (2017), her film for the Biennale, has a wider political target. “Because I went to Venice for about a week or so to write a script for it, and it was shortly after Brexit and shortly after the American election, I was quite interested in this political landscape and the rise of nationalism and the ‘alt-right’ and something that was larger than specifically Scottish nationalism,” she says.  

...Does her Trump-like character reappear? “It’s more allusive,” she replies. “You can pick up on certain things or certain tropes in political characters, but I didn’t want there to be somebody who, for example, directly referenced Trump or directly referenced a recognisable political figure. I wanted the characters to feel a little bit more like an amalgam of different characters and different ideas.

And so they do. But they can't help but mirror the most obvious public examples either, and the images - both the public one of Trump and, in the film, Pic, are such strong ones, it takes a while to see the other characters woven in, characters like Cinderella, Jack and the Ugly Duckling and perhaps a Midas who has yet to learn his lesson.

The show will be on display in Venice from 13 May-26 November then will be shown at Talbot Rice Gallery at the University of Edinburgh from March 2018 and at Chapter, Cardiff from Oct 2018.

#RRR