Mirror, Mirror
Montreal-shot Snow White makeover is not the fairest of them all.
One of the more memorable scenes in Mirror Mirror – the big-budget Snow White reboot shot in Montreal last summer and which opens Friday – involves the seven dwarfs attacking the prince and his loyal sidekick in the snowy woods. It’s eye-catching in large part because these thieving small guys are doing their dirty deeds while jumping around on giant bouncy bungee stilts that effectively turn them into giants.
The scene with the dwarfs towering over the average-height folks is typical of this quite unusual twist on the classic fairy tale – which stars Julia Roberts, Lily Collins, Armie Hammer and Nathan Lane – and it was fascinating to watch them filming the sequence in one of the biggest soundstages at Mel’s Cité du Cinéma studios late last August. The set was dominated by dozens of real birch trees that had been imported from somewhere just outside Montreal, with the ground covered in fake snow.
A small group of journalists watched as Hammer, who plays the charming prince smitten with Snow White, was battling it out with the dwarfs, with the little guys on stilts doing flips and flying in every direction. It was a mighty impressive sight that day – and it’s just as impressive on the big screen.
Later that day, director Tarsem Singh explained the thinking behind the stilts.
“I didn’t have the time, money or inkling to go toward a Lord of the Rings (style),” said Singh, whose previous films include the Montreal-shot Immortals and The Cell. “Small guys with hairy feet is not my cup of tea. I didn’t really know how to make that fighting work. So I thought – how do I make these dwarfs work. Everyone was saying – ‘Go CGI (computer-generated images) with them.’ And I thought we didn’t have time. Plus, I wanted to work with real dwarfs. Then I thought – what do you try to compensate for. If you have a hair-loss problem, you wear the biggest wig you can. These are short guys. What do they want to do? They just want to be tall. So I said, ‘Put them on stilts.’ So they’ll be really fast. They can move, they can fight. But it’s all from the insecurities that come from being small. It’s just very dynamic.”
Roberts, who plays (with much delight) the wicked stepmother/ Queen, had already finished her filming on Mirror Mirror and was not on set that day in August. Collins plays Snow White and, in an interview just outside the dwarfs’ charming low-ceilinged home at Mel’s, she talked of how easily she slipped into the role of one of the most iconic fairy-tale characters.
“Having grown up a fan of the fairy tale, I always had a vision of who she would be,” said Collins, who is the daughter of former Gen- esis frontman Phil Collins and also starred in The Blind Side and Abduction.
“I think everyone has a little bit of Snow White in them, the innocence but also the drive to find yourself,” Collins said. “I watched a lot of old movies, a lot of old black-and-whites, and I idolized Katharine Hepburn and Audrey Hepburn, and just the way a lot of older actresses say a lot through their eyes. That they don’t have to say a lot to convey a message. And I wanted Snow White to have that feel about her.
“Snow White, but also Lily, have grown a lot. We filmed the beginning of the movie when I got here and I was very excited, but also didn’t know much. I was just coming into this experience. I was just very wide-eyed and excited, and that’s how Snow White is at the beginning. She’s that innocent girl who’s willing to try new things and experience life. At the end, she grows into a young woman, and I feel that I have matured, too, and learned a lot about acting while I’ve been here.”
Mirror Mirror is a revamp of the Snow White tale with contemporary humour and a number of distinct twists on the classic story, including casting the dwarfs as rogue criminals with height issues and Snow White herself as a kind of sword-wielding Girl Power icon. There is another Snow White rethink coming, the much darker, more adult Snow White and the Huntsman, with Kristen Stewart as the title character and Charlize Theron playing the Evil Queen with major-league attitude. That film opens June 1.
Collins also auditioned for Snow White and the Huntsman but didn’t get the role.
“The other Snow White is a completely different take on the story,” said Collins. “It’s a different Snow White. Kristen’s version is a darker, edgier version and ours is a comedic adventure fairy tale, more magical. I’m really excited for Kristen. I think she’s perfect for their version. She and I have joked about it. Everyone says there’s a huge rivalry, but there’s not. We’re friends and we’re excited for each other. She’ll do a really good job and I can’t wait to see that version. But for me, this is the version that I always lived in my head.”
Singh said he felt no particular pressure due to the fact that another studio had a competing Snow White picture on the go at the same time.
“We were prepping months before they had announced anything,” said Singh. “For me the only person that can get hurt from a process like this is the second one and they would have every reason to fear us. But for us, I don’t really care about it.”
Singh shot two consecutive movies in Montreal, first Immortals and then almost right after Mirror Mirror, and so clearly he enjoys making films in our town. But his reasons for working chez nous are rather pragmatic.
“I think it’s your tax breaks,” said Singh. “I wish it was more romantic than that. After making The Fall, which was a magical mystery tour around the globe, these needed studio setups and Relativity (which produced both movies) needed a place where the (budget) worked. And I wouldn’t agree to shoot it in a lot of the Eastern Bloc countries they said it worked in (financially) because I knew I’d have to take everyone from England there. So then Montreal seemed to click off all the boxes. You can get excellent talent. You can get English-speaking people here. And all the department heads are fantastic. And America is just around the corner.”
Mirror Mirror opens Friday.