MovieChat Forums > Mirrormask (2006) Discussion > Too infantile to be the fantasy of a 15 ...

Too infantile to be the fantasy of a 15 yr old young woman

posted 15 years ago by Daannny
20 replies | jump to latest

I really wanted to love this movie and was looking forward to watching it.
It was something of a disappointment.

I found the movie visually brilliant but also thought the philosophy was too infantilizing, the dialogues very hollow and the characters poorly developed and not much involving. In other words I loved everything I saw but I couldn't really relate with the characters and felt no connection to them, I wasn't really caring about what would happen to them. I also thought there was no real resolution, the smoothering mother was the one to defeat not the other Helena.

But I also think that for the kind of story and moral they had in mind, with that pretentious cautionary tale for preschool kids feel to it, they should have used a way younger character. The way she acts and is treated is not real or plausible. Fifteen years olds are not that child-like, they don't express themselves in such a way and if they dream of parallel worlds full of simbolism, they're not that infantile. (Wanna see a good portrait of young adults? Watch "Stand by Me")

Alice (in Wonderland) was 9 year old not 15 like Helena, and yet even Alice, her dream and her thoughts were more adult and involving, hence respectful of the maturity and insight of young people (in the book)

I could have muted the audio and see the movie as a spectural trip in a fantasy and visually stunning world. But the rendition of the human relationships and perspectives was very poor in my opinion.

[–] IsFramed 15 years ago

Wow. Stole the words from my mouth.

~+~+~+~+~+~+~+~
Smiles From Mars. :)

[–] blueelm-1 15 years ago

"Fifteen years olds are not that child-like, they don't express themselves in such a way and if they dream of parallel worlds full of simbolism, they're not that infantile. (Wanna see a good portrait of young adults? Watch "Stand by Me") "

This one did. Sure my life was filled with sex and drugs but in my own mind I was pretty much a little girl, and despite the depravity around me I was pretty astoundingly innocent. I'd shy away from stating what ALL people are or think. So you couldn't relate. That's nice. But really you speak for yourself.

[–] Daannny 15 years ago

The maturity of a 15 year old is pretty universal, related to things like cognitive and physical development. Regardless of your perception of yourself, you didn't talk, communicate, reason and act like a 6 year old would.
And also why always contrappose sex to innocence? I'm not talking about sexual references when I say that the character should be less infantile. Besides I don't believe there's anything non-innocent in sex and I don't believe a person becomes less innocent if he/she experiences sex.

In fact I don't really know what innocence is except the lack of guilt.
I think innocent is the most pointless word used to describe young people.

Alice Liddell was 9 years old in a victorian setting (so pretty prudish) and yet even her character conveyed more maturity and less stereotypical infantilism than this one.

[–] kissmeimawriter 15 years ago

I don't think she's infantile; sure, she may be somewhat immature for her age, but not infantile.

Fifteen-year-olds are very self-centered (like she is in the beginning, angry over having to perform), and do still play make-believe (she drew an entire freaking world), even if in their own heads.

I was probably about as mature as she was at fifteen. Still naive, but starting to understand more of the world. Kind of caught in between.

[–] enfieldboy 14 years ago

It was a poxy dream for gods sake.

[–] Daannny 14 years ago

It's well known that our mind plays trick on us by converting our past memories to something they weren't in order to fit our present beliefs. Teens are mature and in fact according to questionnaire based studies, they are often more mature and more rational than their parents. You'll always have people, at whatever age, who is self-centered and egotistical but that's a choice, it has nothing to do with age or competence or intelligence, it's just a egotistical choice or getting what you want at the expense of the others.

A lot of parents who think their teens are stupid and immature, used actually to be very smart and mature teens but growing up they started believing in the stereotypes of their role and their mind altered their memories to fit their present narrow belief and prejudices.

[–] TheDelusionist 14 years ago

I can see your point, but what you're saying implies that all of our significant experiences in life are made when we are young and at some point it's just decay. While I do believe that teens are underestimated by society I don't think that we should fall in an other extremist view and underestimate adults. Their points of view of the world may be different, but nevertheless valid.

Seems to me you're just plain scared

[–] hydropump 14 years ago

Frankly, I beg to differ. Maybe you didn't, but I dreamed up fantasy worlds all the time when I was fifteen, and the people in them didn't have deep philosophical things to say because they couldn't be any smarter than I was...Alice and Wonderland was written by a grown man after all, not a nine year old. You think that fifteen year olds can't be infantile? How many fifteen year olds do you know?

Helena: If I tell you something weird... will you think I'm crazy?
Valentine: Yes, I expect so.

[–] Daannny 14 years ago

I don't think fifteen years old can infantile and I've known many fifteen years old of course, my ex class mates. Fifteen years old can be immature, just like fifty years old. But immature and infantile are different things.

The mind of a small child is infantile because he/she doesn't know the world well, doesn't know how society works (since it's a fake human creation) certain neurological competences about space and time haven't been completely acquired.

But a fifteen years old, either socially or biologically is perfectly aware of the world he/she lives in, have completely developed neurological skills, have a fully formed grasp of reality, space, time, substance and has independent thoughts based on what she/he disagree or agree with as far as society rules and conventions are concerned. Such a person can't be infantile.

Immaturity on the other hand is possessing all the social, biological, neurological skill and having a firm grasp of the world where you live in and its rules and having independent thoughts and thinking of yourself as an individual with responsabilities whose actions have direct consequences BUT ignoring consequences and responsabilities in order to fulfill your egotistical need at the expense of others. This is immaturity and there's no age for that.
Certain infantile young children can be mature whether certain sixty years old people can be as immature as possible.

Also children knows the secrets of the world (a philosopher used to say) but they don't have the words to express them. On the other hand a fifteen years old have the world to express her philosophical thoughts and there's no person, even the foolest one, that doesn't have deep thoughts about life and everything.
So even children have philosophical thoughts but they don't know how to explain them (Alice in Wonderland is very deep and philosophical most of the time) let alone a young adult.

[–] dark_frances 8 years ago

But one of the main sources of conflict (and character) was the very fact that Helena lived in a weird world - different from "real life". She didn't know much about "normal" society. She did want to get out of there, and whether she could or could not was one of the main background plot issues ("you couldn't handle real life"). Besides, to a certain extent, everyone in the Circus was a maladjusted human being, childish, weird, full of imagination and slightly unhinged, leading their lives in a moving Circus - like they say in the end, you have to be mad to live in that world. Bottom line, she is no normal 15 years old.

And, the way I understood it, according to the final idea, that world was still a part of real life; as weird as their existence was, they did not live in a parallel universe, they were not safe from trouble and pain and growing old, and "handling real life" pretty much meant nothing more than being able to understand the emotions of other people and act with care towards them, whoever they are, however they live. And that's something she seems to learn by the end of the movie, without truly leaving the odd fairy tale life that was hers.

Briefly put, aside from the emotional maturity she lacked, in the very sense you've described here above, she had good reason to seem infantile from the perspective of our world, while she may have been a perfectly normal non-infantile person from the perspective of her world. Considering your distinction between "infantile" and "immature", which seems very helpful in this context btw, part of the main point was that, while infantility may be relative to your social point of reference, immaturity is not - it can hurt and wreck havoc regardless of the type of life you lead ("normal" or in a Circus, real or imaginary).

there's a highway that is curling up like smoke above her shoulder

[–] doviine 14 years ago

It was a dream, not a fantasy.

[–] beautifulboy70 14 years ago

Infantile? I would have to wholeheartedly disagree. As an imaginative teen once myself, and as an adult who works with teens in a creative arts program, I can attest that most teens do have infantile imaginations - of the "Twilight" variety, unfortunately. I thank the gods every time I run across a teen who has a sharp, cunning, bright, powerful imagination that comes up with ideas and visual concepts such as you find in MirrorMask. I couldn't stand my job otherwise.

[–] angeles_st_ides 14 years ago

I'm not going to get into this whole infantile or not argument. But the movie was a snore and a half with a "i've seen this a million times before" storyline.

Visually interesting some of the time, I suppose, but I felt like it was a poor man's David Lynch in that it felt forced and pretentious, as in "hey people, this is art!"

Same with some of the nonsense dialogue.. trying too hard.

[–] chilone 13 years ago

I don't know what you're talking about. If anything, to be she seemed more mature than a 15 year old not that it matters. To me the movie "worked" very well and like the saying goes, "If I have to explain, you wouldn't understand."

I feel more like I do now that when I first got here...

[–] xxMans_Ruinxx 13 years ago

Living in the circus and traveling with her family all the time, she would be quite sheltered, too... that might explain some of the immaturity. Also, the fact that her mother may be dying probably would cause some people to revert back to being somewhat infantile in their behaviors and thinking.

"I like my coffee black, just like my metal"

[–] tara_12_heck 13 years ago

Who are you to say what age group can imagine what?

"Haha... Optimus Prime."

[–] spazzout0138 12 years ago

Like others have said, I can see your point, and the point you're trying to make, but honestly it's not a very strong point to make as a flaw of this film.

Kids gain maturity at different ages, depending on their specific situations.
You're bringing up Alice simply throws your entire post into contradiction because a regular 9 year old girl /wouldn't/ be that mature, which is the same exact point you're trying to make, only in the opposite direction.

But it's not unheard of for a 9 year old girl to be that mature, and it's not unheard of for a 15 year old girl to be immature.

You can't put an expiration date on immaturity, and there's no set date or age that you gain maturity.

I know kids that are very mature for their years, and I know young adults (early twenties) who are quite immature, and adults who are even more immature and infantile.

Again, I understand the point you're trying to make, but you shouldn't go as far as to make this sound as though its a factual error that the filmmakers made because it's not. You can't relate to it, that's perfectly fine, but again, none of it is unheard of.

I, personally, think it would have been a terrible idea to make the character younger because then I wouldn't have been able to relate to it. But just as I would have been unable to relate to that version, you can't relate to this. Whereas I relate to this, and you would have been able to relate to that.