Film Review--Inkheart

Inkheart
directed by Iain Softley
written by David Lindsay Abaire
based on the novel by Cornelia Funke
starring Brendan Fraser, Sienna Guillory, Eliza Bennett, Paul Bettany, Helen Mirren, Andy Serkis, Jim Broadbent

Words can be brutal, vicious things once they are properly unleashed. In this film a 12 year old girl discovers she shares her father’s terrible gift of bringing books to life. Along with her father she tries to track down her mother who disappeared when she was three. In this fantasy action film books routinely come alive and their texts are employed for various means both nefarious and honest.

Maggie Folchart (Bennett) is not exactly a typical child. She’s devoted to books and takes great pleasure curling up in a corner absorbed in some fantastic tale or another. She travels with her father Mo (Fraser) on a quest to find a copy of the book, “Inkheart”. Mo goes into the book shop and hears strange voices coming out of a book. He soon realizes that he has finally discovered the book which has been out of print for many years. He opens it and inadvertently summons a man named Dustfinger (Bettany) who claims to have come out of the book many years before when Mo had read to Maggie. They part but soon Mo is surrounded by a horrific party of villains who have also come from the book. Maggie soon realizes that her father has not really been looking for the book but rather for her mother. It is also discovered that the mother Resa (Guillory) has somehow been sucked into the book when three of the villains came out. The film is a rescue mission in which the lovely Resa is firstly chained and then bound up in a hemp net. Her dire circumstances inform the film with a decisive urgency.

The leader of the band of troublemakers is named Capricorn (Serkis) and he has made quite a place for himself outside of the book. He lives in a castle and has control over his minions who really are a ghastly lot. They are truly a uniform block of exceedingly bad men who are without a decent instinct among them. They are good for the kids because there is nothing ambiguous about their behavior. They are simply bad and this makes it all the more easier to root for the traditionally honorable characters who find themselves trapped in a nightmare scenario that they must use their great and terrible powers to escape from.

The author of the book is a man named Fenoglio (Broadbent) and he’s utterly delighted to discover that the characters who have come to life are precisely as he has imagined them. He is employed to use his writing skills to solve the terrible dilemma so that everyone might be set free from Capricorn’s unsavory realm.

This is certainly a film that celebrates the power of the written word and its ability to change landscapes and influence readers to move beyond their limitations. Numerous works including “The Wizard of Oz”, “Arabian Nights” and “The Adventures of Tom Sawyer” are brought forth in various guises to provide the film with a firm link to the annals of classic literature. Many familiar staples are explored including the heroic quest, the damsel in distress, and the hero who discovers they have magic powers they must use to extricate themselves out of a dangerous situation. In tried and true form the hero here is but a child who has inherited a great power that is nevertheless exceedingly dangerous if it is used without caution. The possibilities are indeed endless and one imagines the impact on our world that certain infamous texts might enjoy. Books such as the Marquis de Sade’s “120 Days of Sodom”, or George Bataille’s “The Trial of Gilles de Rais” would certainly add a bit of spice to any environment. These are perhaps the kinds of books that should be explored in the sequel.

Sienna Guillory is in this film but she makes a lasting impression with her otherworldly beauty that is luminescent and startling to behold. She makes for a worthy distressed lass and her every movement while constrained is but an exquisite form of torment. She does quite a lot despite being unable to speak and it’s clear why Mo is such an impossibly lucky bastard to have her.

As this is a typical story that doesn’t do anything particularly alarming in its telling, it’s no mystery what will happen when the film reaches it’s conclusion. Yes, the story is predictable in terms of whether or not the right people get out alive and the wrong people perish but there is a consistency that is supremely effective throughout the film.

Helen Mirren is delightfully comical as Elinor Loredan, Mo’s fussy and fastidious Aunt who is something of a chore. She’s tight fisted and very protective of her glorious library. Naturally she is horrified when the band of cretins thoughtlessly destroy many of her books including a rare Persian manuscript that she has on display in a special glass case. It’s an instance that articulates the plight of modern civilization where books are no longer treasured by the masses and often treated with open hostility by the very children who need the continuing nourishment that books provide. The stories presented in this film are timeless and have served numerous cultures from their inception. The film wants its audience to become obsessed with reading and studying the classics or at least modern classics that are legitimately capable of transforming lives.

The special effects in the film are seamless and the alternative worlds they create are wholly believable. This film is magical in that it carries the viewer along into a different world that is nevertheless populated with figures and scenes that ought to be familiar to all. Of course the reality is that we have taken such books for granted and their authority has become diminished in the minds of too many over time. Still, the film insists they are necessary components to any society that pretends to call itself a Culture.

The performances in this film are all viable for the genre. Brendan Fraser has bankrolled his everyman persona in a number of films over the course of his career. In this film, he doesn’t play against type and allows the other actors to play off of him. He’s congenial, inoffensive if not a bit bland. Still he isn’t being asked to carry this film on his good name alone. There are several other performers who do their bit to push the film along to where it needs to go. Eliza Bennett is a real find. Maggie’s got all the cockiness of youth coupled with a genuinely charming disposition which is necessary to sell this type of family movie. Andy Serkis is clearly having a diabolically good time throughout this film. Capricorn’s eyes are consumed with menace as he casts his web of infamy on anyone who dares to get in his way. He possesses a terrible charisma in his own right that is beguiling for much of the film. Sienna Guillory is as mentioned a graceful, elegant and comely creature whose difficulties in the film are made more horrible because she is such a shatteringly delightful presence. It’s always better in a film to rescue a woman who exudes a natural beauty that is disarming and impossible to ignore. At least cinematically it seems to put a higher value on the mission. Helen Mirren is a oddball in this film. Her character is a combination of style and severity. She’s not the kind of woman one would ever want to scorn.

Overall, this film does everything it sets out to do. It’s a barn-raising tale informed by something that is infinitely valuable in a society that pretends to call itself literate. It values both the spoken and written word in a time when these are being obscured by the feeding trough of technology. It’s an interesting dichotomy between an expensive, effects-heavy film that relies on ingenious applications of the latest technology and a decisively low tech form of entertainment and illumination. In the end the word prevails and the final word in this film is that good stories are viable, necessary creations that possess an uncanny power to alter consciousness and transform the reader’s entire approach to life. Also, spoken words should not be employed lightly or taken for granted. They can harm as much as soothe and they can never be taken back once they are uttered.