Mermaids Pelicula

[Willy Aucoin]

Popculture renderings of mermaids have, for too long, looked largely one way: young, thin and white. That formula will, thankfully, be ditched in the highly anticipated Little Mermaid remake, with Halle Bailey cast as Ariel. But for anyone seeking stories that center Black mermaids before that movie hits screens in 2023, check out the short film The Water Will Carry Us Home. Created by artist and filmmaker Gabrielle Tesfaye, it tells the story of enslaved Africans thrown from the ships that ferried them across the Middle Passage. In the water, they are met by mermaid-like Orishas, deities within the Yoruba religion of West Africa. (Done watching? Read about the similarly mermaid-esque Yemaya, the Ocean Mother Goddess of the Santera religion whose roots also go back to Yoruba.)

This Russian horror-fantasy movie is inspired by Slavic mythology. According to legend, unmarried girls who drowned would turn into evil, mermaid-like entities called Rusalkas, doomed to haunt rivers and lakes. In Mermaid: Lake of the Dead, one such mermaid slash ghoul falls in love with an unsuspecting dude, Roma, and is bent on dragging him to her underwater lair for eternity.

Fans of Chilling Adventures of Sabrina are probably at least familiar with its sitcom-y older sister, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, starring Melissa Joan Hart. That series spawned a few made-for-TV movie specials, including Sabrina Down Under, which sees Sabrina and Salem head to the Great Barrier Reef in a bid to save a mermaid colony from pollution and capitalism. Also, Sabrina gets the hots for a merman named Barnaby.

Don't we all know that feeling? That feeling that other people in other places are singing in the sunshine, but here in the shadows of our own miserable existence, the parade has passed us by. It is a key discovery of adult life that almost everyone else feels the same way, too, and that anyone who believes he's leading the parade is either stupid, mistaken or a saint.

Polly (Sheila McCarthy), the heroine of "I've Heard the Mermaids Singing," is a 31-year-old Toronto woman who does not think the mermaids will sing to her. The most important thing in her life is photography, and sometimes she even dreams of the pictures she will take. But no one else has seen her work, and to all outward signs she is a winsome and lonely woman with few skills. Sometimes she gets office work through a temporary agency, but she isn't very good, and so it is with a certain amazement that she finds an employer who actually likes her.

Polly calls her "the Curator," and idolizes her. The Curator is able to overlook Polly's little lapses, such as turning letters into a sticky sea of correction fluid. And one night at a Japanese restaurant, she actually offers Polly a full-time job. Polly recalls that wonderful night, and other nights, on a homemade videotape that serves as the narration for the movie.

"I've Heard the Mermaids Singing" then develops into a much more subtle character study than the opening scenes might have prepared us for. Gabrielle, the Curator, reveals that her greatest regret in life is her inability to become a great painter; she sells the work of others, but she cannot paint. Polly asks to see some of her attempts, and is overwhelmed by them. But of course Polly has no confidence in her own taste, and so she smuggles one of Polly's paintings into a show, where it is laboriously praised in impenetrable artspeak by a hilarious caricature of a critic.

She finds, for example, that Gabrielle has a lover, a woman named Mary, and that Mary, not Gabrielle, actually created the painting that the critic liked. It may be that the Curator lacks not only talent, but taste.

It is only gradually, while we're watching this movie, that we realize it is as much about Gabrielle as Polly and that we are permitted to make discoveries about Gabrielle that Polly herself only dimly suspects. The movie was written and directed by Patricia Rozema, who uses a seemingly simple style to make some quiet and deep observations. What happens to Polly in the movie is easy to anticipate; she learns to trust in mermaids. What happens to Gabrielle is that she is closely observed and skillfully dissected.

When the movie is over, we leave thinking of Polly, and I have even read reviews in which the movie is treated entirely as Polly's story. That is partly because of McCarthy's extraordinary performance in the role; she has one of those faces that speaks volumes, and she is able to be sad without being depressing, funny without being a clown.

She strikes just the right off-center note for the narration of the film; she must not seem to sure of herself, because the movie must not seem too sure of what it wants to say. It works by indirection, and Polly is actually only the instrument for the real story here, of a lonely and proud woman whose surfaces are flawless but whose sadness is deep.

If you see this movie and then have occasion to read "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," which contains lines that strike some readers with the force of a blow, reflect that the narrator of the poem is more like Gabrielle than Polly. More like the Curator, who has measured out her life in coffee spoons, who has seen the moment of her greatness flicker, who lacks the strength to force the moment to its crisis, who grows old. Polly is, I suspect, intended to be out there with the mermaids, neither stupid nor mistaken, but a saint.

Disney's live-action version of their 1989 animated film "The Little Mermaid" is just about to hit theaters and involved the challenge of shooting actors underwater. Drawing mermaids is (relatively) easy, but actual humans like to breathe oxygen now and then. So demanding, right? Unlike "Avatar: The Way of Water," which shot underwater scenes in actual water ("wet-for-wet"), "The Little Mermaid" used a similar technique to "Aquaman" in that they did most of their "swimming" in the air in harnesses ("dry-for-wet").

Filming underwater is a little rough for humans. For "Avatar: The Way of Water," director James Cameron had his cast learn freediving, shooting wet-for-wet, with the actors in actual water. I got a chance to experience this with the film's Marine Unit and consultant Kirk Krack at a recent Los Angeles press event. We were taken through the techniques they used to teach the actors to ignore their body's signals to breathe, and I made it to two-and-a-half minutes on land (though I suck at it in the water). It's not something to try at home, and even though Kate Winslet managed to hold her breath for seven minutes and 14 seconds, she had taken in a mix of oxygen and other gasses to allow her to do this.

It took a lot of training, and Krack was in every underwater scene (though you can't see him) as a safety precaution. So why would they do something so complicated? Well, "Avatar: The Way of Water" didn't just have humans playing humans. The actors were playing Nav'i and using motion capture in addition to having all the creatures in each scene. When you use scuba gear underwater, the bubbles that result show up on camera in the same way the little motion capture dots on the actors do. That makes it pretty difficult for digital artists to render movement. Freediving has the actors holding their breath, so there are very few bubbles to get in the way. Add in the fact that Cameron is an advocate for saving our oceans, and you can understand his feelings on this.

For "The Little Mermaid," most of the underwater scenes were shot with the actors in harnesses in the air. I attended the press conference for the film where Melissa McCarthy, who plays Ursula the sea witch, explained that her feet didn't touch the ground during the shoot. She said:

"I was never literally on my feet, we were either up in rigs, or there were all different magical things. [...] If you were diving, it was one rig. If you were spinning, it was another ... But no, never on the ground. And this amazing team of dancers and stunt people that just kind of were our fins or feet, however, you want to say. So each person had its team, this wonderful, glorious ensemble."

"Filming underwater was so much fun, but it was kind of brief, honestly, because most of the time I was on wires and in the air and in what they called a 'tuning fork,' where I would swim in the air and kind of simulated being in Ariel's Grotto and everything, so that's where I spent most of my time. But for the times when I would be underwater, it was crazy. I was in this huge water tank, and it was like they had this wave machine that would go, and I can't wait until you guys actually see it, so you know what I'm talking about, but it felt like I was in the middle of the ocean."

It's the same technique they used in "Aquaman," with the same sort of tuning fork rigs, as you can see in a video from Frame Focus, which shows some behind-the-scenes footage of the actors in harnesses. Honestly, either way, it's not that far off from reality in terms of looks.

Promotes courage, curiosity, empathy. Explores importance of not believing an entire group of people is evil or careless simply because some of them have behaved poorly or been violent. Emphasizes power of connection and alliance-building. The story still focuses on romance and sacrificing aspects of yourself to pursue romance, but Triton also tells Ariel straight out that "you shouldn't have to give up your voice to be heard." Significantly, this version takes time to show Ariel and Eric building a genuine connection with each other. And it encourages honest communication between parents and young adult children.

Ariel is smart, brave, curious, kind, as well as a bit impulsive. She makes her deal with Ursula without really thinking the consequences through. Eric is courageous, thoughtful, open-minded, loyal. He wants to explore the world beyond his island kingdom to forge alliances and support innovation. Both Ariel and Eric view their relationship as a way to bridge their worlds. King Triton and Queen Selina are each protective of their children and don't want them to be in danger. Sebastian, Flounder, and Scuttle can be silly but are devoted to Ariel and aim to help her. Sir Grimsby is faithful to the crown and encourages Eric to give Ariel a chance as a possible love interest.

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