Further Thoughts on The Princess
Aug. 24th, 2010 01:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiMy initial review of this film is here.
I think I have figured out the use of live action vs. animation. It seems to track with August's perspective on the world. From middle school or so, he seems to have had a sometimes bizarre fascination with filming things. His home movies gradually became his sister's entry point into porn. Years later, he has moved away from this impulse to document all of life. (Note, though, that he is still holding a camera less then five years before the timeline of the film while Christina menaces baby Mia with a knife. Christina, put down the knife. August, put down the camera.) Even if August has moved away from holding a camera on everything, however, he seems to retain a basic sense that the world documented in film is more substantial than the world he walks through. Thus, he sees film/photography as live action: it has weight, reality. He sees real life as crude animation: an ugly sketch of life, distorted and insubstantial. This might partly explain the ease with which he falls into massive acts of violence and his weird unconcern with being tracked by the police. The real world is not quite real to him. And since, as cameraman, he never sees himself on film, he has no view of himself as "real"; his own self-image floats through crude distortion.
The last two scenes, after August is dead, are live action: Charlie visiting the graves of Christina, Mia and August and the three of them "in heaven," it seems, finally having their trip to the beach. The grave scene may be live action because it is Charlie's POV, our first real escape from August's distorted view of reality. The beach scene might be an objective POV or perhaps August "saved," removed from the ugly subjectivity of his worldly perceptions.
I can't help but notice, too, that "real" Mia in the beach scene looks entirely different from cartoon Mia. At first, I just thought this was odd casting, but now I'm inclined to think it has meaning. "Real" Mia looks a lot like her mother, i.e. they have the same hair color and quality (brown). Cartoon Mia (August's POV) is a black-haired kids with huge, soulful dark eyes. She is clearly drawn to look like Charlie, her putative father. But is he her father? Or does August just assume he is? Is his view of Mia (and Charlie) colored by a suspected uncle/father rivalry that is, in fact, insubstantial? No one in the story ever refers to Charlie as her father, and while this doesn't mean he's not, it certainly leaves a space for other possibilities.
I think I have figured out the use of live action vs. animation. It seems to track with August's perspective on the world. From middle school or so, he seems to have had a sometimes bizarre fascination with filming things. His home movies gradually became his sister's entry point into porn. Years later, he has moved away from this impulse to document all of life. (Note, though, that he is still holding a camera less then five years before the timeline of the film while Christina menaces baby Mia with a knife. Christina, put down the knife. August, put down the camera.) Even if August has moved away from holding a camera on everything, however, he seems to retain a basic sense that the world documented in film is more substantial than the world he walks through. Thus, he sees film/photography as live action: it has weight, reality. He sees real life as crude animation: an ugly sketch of life, distorted and insubstantial. This might partly explain the ease with which he falls into massive acts of violence and his weird unconcern with being tracked by the police. The real world is not quite real to him. And since, as cameraman, he never sees himself on film, he has no view of himself as "real"; his own self-image floats through crude distortion.
The last two scenes, after August is dead, are live action: Charlie visiting the graves of Christina, Mia and August and the three of them "in heaven," it seems, finally having their trip to the beach. The grave scene may be live action because it is Charlie's POV, our first real escape from August's distorted view of reality. The beach scene might be an objective POV or perhaps August "saved," removed from the ugly subjectivity of his worldly perceptions.
I can't help but notice, too, that "real" Mia in the beach scene looks entirely different from cartoon Mia. At first, I just thought this was odd casting, but now I'm inclined to think it has meaning. "Real" Mia looks a lot like her mother, i.e. they have the same hair color and quality (brown). Cartoon Mia (August's POV) is a black-haired kids with huge, soulful dark eyes. She is clearly drawn to look like Charlie, her putative father. But is he her father? Or does August just assume he is? Is his view of Mia (and Charlie) colored by a suspected uncle/father rivalry that is, in fact, insubstantial? No one in the story ever refers to Charlie as her father, and while this doesn't mean he's not, it certainly leaves a space for other possibilities.
