READERS OF The Ticket, being educated sorts, will know that the Freudian phrase das unheimlicheliterally translates as "unhomely". It normally pops up in English- language textbooks as "uncanny", but certain exercises in creative weirdness – here's one – cry out for the German word's allusions to a lost hearth.
Henry Selick's rather wonderful stop-motion adaptation of Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline, yet another literary variation on the Alice theme, has a lot to do with distortions, idealisations and celebrations of home. It's the sort of film that scares highly strung parents, while delighting their more blase infants.
As is often the case in classic children’s stories, the heroine has just moved from familiar surroundings to somewhere windier and less cosy. Coraline Jones is a bright, easily annoyed child with a round face and the voice of Dakota Fanning. Her parents (gardening writers, of all things) have rented a flat in an echoing house on a grey limbo and, distracted by work and household administration, find little time to entertain their daughter.
In her explorations, the girl encounters a sour cat, a grim young man called Wybie (Why be . . . ?) and a pair of deranged thespians voiced fruitily by Jennifer Saunders and Dawn French. None of these weird characters, however, prepares her for what lies behind the door in her bedroom. When the moon rises, a passage opens up that leads to an alternate version of her current home (itself an unsatisfactory replacement for the old one).
In this tidier house, the “Other Mother” finds time to cook the child delicious meals, while Coraline’s Other Father reveals a garden full of magical, dancing plants. Everyone here has buttons for eyes but, surely, the girl can put up with that if the treats keep coming.
Selick is best known for directing The Nightmare Before Christmas. That film dripped with gothic style, but never really engaged at an emotional level. By way of contrast, Coraline, like similar yarns such as Pan's Labyrinth and Spirited Away, is infused with the terror of impending adulthood and the unrecognised fear that one's one own maturing brain is making home an increasingly unfamiliar place.
Using 3-D technology to admirable effect, Selick emphasises these feelings of unease by creating characters that look a little too like dolls for comfort. (After all, dolls are almost as scary as clowns, aren’t they?) The fine incidental music wafts in as if blown in from faraway orchestras. Cosiness is rare.
And, yet, Coralinedoes end up pointing the characters towards some soothing truths about the power of love and the comforts of, yes, home. It's a truly uncanny piece of work.
Directed by Henry Selick. Voices of Dakota Fanning, Teri Hatcher, Dawn French, Jennifer Saunders, Ian McShane, Keith David PG cert, gen release, 100 min
