《镜子面具》是平面绘图大师达夫·麦克基恩执导的第一部剧情长片，影片中充满了变化多端的平面蒙太奇，真人与动画相互融合，诡异、妖冶如梦境般光怪陆离的画面令人难以拒绝。影片在风格上和宫崎骏的电影有很多相似之处，儿童梦境题材，故事意境深远，想像力丰富，只是麦克基恩对剧情的把握能力还稍有不足，故事节奏被淹没在如天花般绚烂的画面中。 和麦克基恩共同编剧的英国作家尼尔·盖曼更是一代奇才，他是现代十大顶级后现代主义作家之一，他的作品大部份都是奇幻小说，曾为DC公司创作漫画系列《睡魔》的剧本，并此一共获得9次动漫产业奖和一世界奇幻奖的最佳短篇小说奖。2001年，他的奇幻长篇小说《美国众神》（AmericanGods）赢得了奇幻小说界最有名的雨果奖和星云奖，以及恐怖小说界的最高荣誉布莱姆·斯托克奖， 2003、2004年，他又先后凭《卡罗兰》和《绿字的研究》两度斩获雨果奖，成为奇幻文学界最炙手可热的作家。 从片名可以解读出影片的主题，魔法世界中每个人都有“面具”，强调有生命即有面具，如同每个人脸上的喜怒哀乐，那是别人眼中的自己，而“镜子”则是自己观察自己，镜子有时的确能看到真实的实像，但是当镜子倾斜45度时，镜子中的就是假像，而形状不规则的镜子更是折射出千变万化的假像，影片通过强调“镜子”和“面具”，试图说明一切都是假像，只有主人公内心认定的世界是真的，她可以把生活当做一场梦，也可以把一场梦当做生活，甚至自己都未必是自己。很深奥，暂且不论，对于影片来说，无论奇幻、科幻、写实、纪录，都只是一场视觉的游戏。 by William Ruhlmann Director Dave McKean's MirrorMask, a film developed through the Jim Henson Company, is an elaborate fantasy that has been likened to a 21st century version of The Wizard of Oz or Alice in Wonderland in the sense that it follows a girl into a strange world, albeit a darker one than those depicted in such children's books. McKean imagined an extremely diverse background score. ("I wanted the film to sound like everywhere and nowhere," he writes in the liner notes to the soundtrack album.) And he has gotten it in the first such effort by jazz saxophonist Iain Ballamy, who, for his part, claims with justification to have created "a unique and eclectic soundtrack." Eclectic it certainly is. One minute an accordion is playing circus music (in keeping with the opening setting in a circus). Soon after, Eastern European music reminiscent of Kurt Weill (and later Tom Waits) appears, then a complex, fast-paced classical composition that sounds like something Frank Zappa would come up with ("Rabbit Band"). There are eerie passages that sound orchestral (although much of the music is programmed rather than played), and here and there the Scandinavian singer Josefine Cronholm turns up, notably in an odd-sounding, multi-tracked cover of the old Carpenters hit "Close to You." This is a long soundtrack album, running more than 74 minutes and including 30 cues, and, without reference to the film, it sounds like a lot of different soundtrack albums patched together. But maybe that's just a way of saying that the director got what he wanted.