Although "Kingdom of Crooked Mirrors" is transparently Soviet propaganda, the mirror motif is intriguing and potentially undermining of its own message. And while one might rightly expect such a fairy tale clearly inspired by Lewis Carroll's "Through the Looking Glass" to be utterly contrariwise to that book's brilliance, there is some cleverness here. Sure, the breaking of the fourth wall to advise one to "look at yourself with other people's eyes" is blatant collectivist lecturing, the children break into patriotic song at the end, and one of the girls even proclaims when asked from whence she came, "From the best country. There's no country better in the world!" As nauseating as all of that is, the production design isn't bad, albeit childish. Moreover, when the blonde girl, like Alice, follows her cat into the mirror, she meets her own reflection (as played by real twins). Everyone from this looking-glass land has a name that spells another word backwards. The twins, for example, are called Olya and Yalo, or the king is revealed to be the pesky parrot from the world outside the mirror when his name is reversed. The wordplay doesn't get any more clever than that, let alone does it come near approaching Carroll's wit, but in addition to all these doppelgängers and semordnilaps, there's something to the crooked-mirrors business, including as it relates to cinema.
Indeed, the picture begins with a film-within-the-film (a foreign, Italian one, "Abracadabra" (1952)). We don't see the actual film, although many of the town's children do despite a sign stating that no one under 16 is to be admitted. This recalls the beginning of "Alice in Wonderland," with the reading and complaint of books without pictures or conversations. Moreover, film is already strongly associative with mirrors, and their placement beside each other here only suggests that the filmmakers understand that and leverage it. In the fairy tale, there are the crooked mirrors that distort reality and straight ones whereby people see the truth, but the film never really exits the fantasy. Even in the land outside of the mirror, cats and jars of jam move backwards in time and a character makes an address directly to the camera. In its entirety, the film itself is a kingdom of crooked mirrors. The outward politics of it, of submitting to the conformity of others' "eyes," is quite stupid, but the inward reflexivity of a film about films as metaphorical mirrors is rather intelligent. It's actually about examining oneself by looking within--not from without.
Indeed, the picture begins with a film-within-the-film (a foreign, Italian one, "Abracadabra" (1952)). We don't see the actual film, although many of the town's children do despite a sign stating that no one under 16 is to be admitted. This recalls the beginning of "Alice in Wonderland," with the reading and complaint of books without pictures or conversations. Moreover, film is already strongly associative with mirrors, and their placement beside each other here only suggests that the filmmakers understand that and leverage it. In the fairy tale, there are the crooked mirrors that distort reality and straight ones whereby people see the truth, but the film never really exits the fantasy. Even in the land outside of the mirror, cats and jars of jam move backwards in time and a character makes an address directly to the camera. In its entirety, the film itself is a kingdom of crooked mirrors. The outward politics of it, of submitting to the conformity of others' "eyes," is quite stupid, but the inward reflexivity of a film about films as metaphorical mirrors is rather intelligent. It's actually about examining oneself by looking within--not from without.