When I first started going to college in Tacoma I knew film only by the big and biggish names, and my deep love of uncovering filmed obscurities was merely a gleam in my eye. It was around this time that I discovered some local video stores and, finally being away from my parents' cinematic tastes, decided to widely experiment with my rental choices. While there was a Blockbuster not far from my house my most frequent rental stop was Backstage Video on Procter St., now the only video store in Tacoma as that Blockbuster and the mighty Stadium Video have both fallen. What's so neat about Backstage is that they have a large VHS selection not only to rent but for sale, and one of the first videos I checked out was this brooding-looking and intriguing tape:
For those who can't read it, the review at the top of the box says "Paperhouse is the thinking person's Nightmare on Elm Street." That logline, combined with the scary eyes and flaming house, would lead most renters to think that Paperhouse was a horror movie, especially when combined with the salacious back image of a seeming madman wielding a claw hammer like John Hurt attacking a prostitute in From the Hip. Yes, I know this is the British VHS but the American tape looked almost exactly the same, so shush. It was certainly enough to catch my eye, so into my player it went. I was immediately floored, not by horror but by one of the most ingenious, haunting and insightful movies ever made for children, a stunning exploration of the relationship between dreams and childhood whose power is only matched by how infuriating it is that there's no American DVD. It's time to finally tackle this blog's namesake, and I can't think of a better time than the close of the year than to vindicate the name of arguably the best kid's psychological fantasy film ever.
Preteen Anna (Charlotte Burke) is a problem for her mother (Glenne Headly) and her school teachers. Upset that she wasn't allowed to skip school on her birthday*, she immediately picks a fight with another student during class and, when sent out in the hall, is struck down by a fainting spell. She uses this to get her mother to pick her up, only to admit that her illness was partially made up. The next day she ditches school with a friend only to collapse again, finding herself more drawn into a mysterious dream landscape and stuck down with glandular fever. Confined to her bed, Anna takes to drawing paper and draws a house - and upon entering her next dream she sees the house from her drawing on the horizon. Her dream world expands as she continues drawing, and after drawing herself a friend in the window she returns to the world to find Marc (Elliott Spiers), a boy about her age, also traversing the dream world but without the use of his legs. As it turns out Marc is another patient of Anna's doctor who is suffering from a far more debilitating disease, and their dreaming worlds are linked by their incapacitation and things left unexplained. While the two of them find a kind of expansive freedom controlling their private landscape they may not realize its full power, especially when Anna's estranged father comes into the fold.
For those who don't know, my two favorite movies are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Videodrome, two astonishing films that intelligently and realistically explore unbelievable worlds of the human mind, and Paperhouse is the greatest attempt to achieve their brilliance on a young adult level. While the actual causes of the surreal situation are never revealed, Paperhouse is concerned less with cosmology and more with relatable human reactions to being thrust into the unknown and what it reveals about ourselves. It's plot is one of the most creative examples of the "wonderland" plot, wherein an inexperienced, usually troublesome child enters a surreal landscape and emerges a different and wiser person, and Anna's journey lets her imitate a god only to end up a better human. Rather than saddling her with whimsical natives to guide her, Anna's counterpart in Marc is a sobering and intimidating presence, entirely sympathetic, even more mature, but a constant critic of Anna's misuse of her power. If these performances fell flat the whole film would be little more than a 90-minute design exercise, but thankfully one-time actress Charlotte Burke and the tragically departed Elliott Spiers (dying only six years after filming this)** turn in mature and highly empathetic performances that nail every varied emotion the story calls for. The film also wisely avoids the "idiot parent" cliche of fantastic stories wherein a child encounters the Unknown and a skeptical parent assumes lying or insanity in spite of evidence right in front of their faces - Anna's mother is completely unable to understand what her daughter might be going through but sincerely does her best to help her. And trust me when I say when Anna's father shows up he creates an utterly unforgettable screen presence in young adult film.
The most astonishing thing about the film is the production design by Gemma Jackson (Finding Neverland, Game of Thrones), which accomplishes the seemingly impossible feat of reproducing a child's crude drawings of objects exactly in three dimensions. The house is crooked and molded from lumpy clay, all straight lines are wobbly as if drawn with crayon, and mechanical objects barely work due to their kid design. At one point Anna uses a black crayon to scratch out an upstairs window and when she visits it later there are huge, terrifying swaths of porous black scored into the windows, an awful amplification of her worst qualities. All of this is captured with an extraordinary depth of field and lighting design, courtesy of the passionate vision of director Bernard Rose. Rose is an acutely underrated director, part of a generation of filmmakers who came of age in music videos, and would go on to direct Candyman, Immortal Beloved and the highly underrated Chicago Joe and the Showgirl as well as two acclaimed Tolstoy updates, Ivans XTC and The Kreutzer Sonata (neither of which I've seen). Paperhouse is without question his best film and its underexposure is a crime to his name, and the sad thing is that its death was strictly a business decision.
While you wouldn't really think it, the demographic range of children aged 9-12 is pretty tricky to market to, as older pre-pubescents are thirsting for darker, more complex material but have no interest in works that cater to the squirming, shrieking hormone vortexes of the few years just around the corner. As such, filmmakers aiming for the age bracket feel compelled to increase the levels of tension and violence but find themselves facing a PG-13 rating, and in 1988 that rating was so new that consumers didn't really know what to make of it and the MPAA didn't know how to wield it. Paperhouse has nothing particularly objectionable for 10-year-olds but was deemed to frightening for them, and the distributors must have panicked at the prospect of a kids movie unable to be freely viewed by kids and decided to market it as a horror movie - and if there's one thing horror fans hate it's a movie clearly made outside of the genre that gets passed off as a fright flick. I should probably be thankful that the movie has a following at all, a testament to its own greatness and having nothing to do with Vestron Pictures' marketing decisions. And once again, I tip my hat and lift my glass to the internet and its infinite capacity to celebrate the undeservingly obscure and Backstage Video for facilitating my discovery of one of my all-time favorite films.
Bernard, you're a good egg. And all of my readers are good eggs for sticking with my digital ramblings as far as they've annoyingly stuck around. Paperhouse is a wonder and is a fitting final gift from me to you at Eve's Eve. Lion's Gate has finally made the film available on demand on Amazon and YouTube for those who like shelling out bucks for HD, but for the rest of us a couple different users have uploaded the movie in 10-minute chunks. I'm giving you the start, but much like Anna's journey your film viewing experiences are entirely of your making and hopefully leave you enriched. Paperhouse never fails to make me faithful in movies as well as supremely happy, and with my recommendation I wish everyone a Happy New Year and look forward to 2015 with many more articles on the way.
For those who don't know, my two favorite movies are Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and Videodrome, two astonishing films that intelligently and realistically explore unbelievable worlds of the human mind, and Paperhouse is the greatest attempt to achieve their brilliance on a young adult level. While the actual causes of the surreal situation are never revealed, Paperhouse is concerned less with cosmology and more with relatable human reactions to being thrust into the unknown and what it reveals about ourselves. It's plot is one of the most creative examples of the "wonderland" plot, wherein an inexperienced, usually troublesome child enters a surreal landscape and emerges a different and wiser person, and Anna's journey lets her imitate a god only to end up a better human. Rather than saddling her with whimsical natives to guide her, Anna's counterpart in Marc is a sobering and intimidating presence, entirely sympathetic, even more mature, but a constant critic of Anna's misuse of her power. If these performances fell flat the whole film would be little more than a 90-minute design exercise, but thankfully one-time actress Charlotte Burke and the tragically departed Elliott Spiers (dying only six years after filming this)** turn in mature and highly empathetic performances that nail every varied emotion the story calls for. The film also wisely avoids the "idiot parent" cliche of fantastic stories wherein a child encounters the Unknown and a skeptical parent assumes lying or insanity in spite of evidence right in front of their faces - Anna's mother is completely unable to understand what her daughter might be going through but sincerely does her best to help her. And trust me when I say when Anna's father shows up he creates an utterly unforgettable screen presence in young adult film.
The most astonishing thing about the film is the production design by Gemma Jackson (Finding Neverland, Game of Thrones), which accomplishes the seemingly impossible feat of reproducing a child's crude drawings of objects exactly in three dimensions. The house is crooked and molded from lumpy clay, all straight lines are wobbly as if drawn with crayon, and mechanical objects barely work due to their kid design. At one point Anna uses a black crayon to scratch out an upstairs window and when she visits it later there are huge, terrifying swaths of porous black scored into the windows, an awful amplification of her worst qualities. All of this is captured with an extraordinary depth of field and lighting design, courtesy of the passionate vision of director Bernard Rose. Rose is an acutely underrated director, part of a generation of filmmakers who came of age in music videos, and would go on to direct Candyman, Immortal Beloved and the highly underrated Chicago Joe and the Showgirl as well as two acclaimed Tolstoy updates, Ivans XTC and The Kreutzer Sonata (neither of which I've seen). Paperhouse is without question his best film and its underexposure is a crime to his name, and the sad thing is that its death was strictly a business decision.
While you wouldn't really think it, the demographic range of children aged 9-12 is pretty tricky to market to, as older pre-pubescents are thirsting for darker, more complex material but have no interest in works that cater to the squirming, shrieking hormone vortexes of the few years just around the corner. As such, filmmakers aiming for the age bracket feel compelled to increase the levels of tension and violence but find themselves facing a PG-13 rating, and in 1988 that rating was so new that consumers didn't really know what to make of it and the MPAA didn't know how to wield it. Paperhouse has nothing particularly objectionable for 10-year-olds but was deemed to frightening for them, and the distributors must have panicked at the prospect of a kids movie unable to be freely viewed by kids and decided to market it as a horror movie - and if there's one thing horror fans hate it's a movie clearly made outside of the genre that gets passed off as a fright flick. I should probably be thankful that the movie has a following at all, a testament to its own greatness and having nothing to do with Vestron Pictures' marketing decisions. And once again, I tip my hat and lift my glass to the internet and its infinite capacity to celebrate the undeservingly obscure and Backstage Video for facilitating my discovery of one of my all-time favorite films.
Bernard, you're a good egg. And all of my readers are good eggs for sticking with my digital ramblings as far as they've annoyingly stuck around. Paperhouse is a wonder and is a fitting final gift from me to you at Eve's Eve. Lion's Gate has finally made the film available on demand on Amazon and YouTube for those who like shelling out bucks for HD, but for the rest of us a couple different users have uploaded the movie in 10-minute chunks. I'm giving you the start, but much like Anna's journey your film viewing experiences are entirely of your making and hopefully leave you enriched. Paperhouse never fails to make me faithful in movies as well as supremely happy, and with my recommendation I wish everyone a Happy New Year and look forward to 2015 with many more articles on the way.
~PNK
*Certainly a better use of that setup than Meet the Deedles.
**Spiers's last film was the utterly insane-looking Taxandria, so it looks like I'll have one more Armin Meuller-Stahl film to admire before I'm through.
**Spiers's last film was the utterly insane-looking Taxandria, so it looks like I'll have one more Armin Meuller-Stahl film to admire before I'm through.
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