Coraline and The Fascinating Folklores of The Beldam

 

Coraline Jones

Summary: Wandering her rambling old house in her boring new town, Coraline (Dakota Fanning) discovers a hidden door to a fantasy version of her life. To stay in the fantasy, she must make a frighteningly real sacrifice.

Synopsis & My review : (warning, might contain spoilers)

Of course, Coraline has to be the first movie to be put on my review. This is the movie that is sitting on the top tier of my favorite movies. Everything from the storyline, the music score, and the art, it’s amazing and always makes me want to watch it all over again and you should too! This movie is worth to be watched repeatedly. Coraline is made from a stop motion animation that makes it more fascinating. The film’s opening is frightening enough with just skeletal or mechanical hands grabbing a doll that is falling from the sky and then re-made the doll into something new or someone new. After being sewn over, the doll looks exactly like the main character, Coraline. Coraline and her family move to a shared apartment, called Pink Palace Apartments. The upstairs apartment was occupied with Sergei Alexander Bobinsky, he has a jumping mice circus. And the basement apartments were occupied by Miss April Spink and her lover, Miriam Forcible.

Let’s dive into Coraline’s life. Coraline is an only child, people often said her name wrong, and she is always trying to correct them. Not quite a cheerful kid with parents who is busy all the time. She is an only child, so she is sometimes acting spoiled toward his parents because she is craving attention from them who are always busy.

As a kid, moving away is difficult. New school, new neighborhood, and new friends to be with especially with an only child like Coraline, life is kind of tough. As soon as they are settling in, typical most kids, Coraline immediately explores her new neighborhood, and she met a black cat who keeps following her. And after that, she meets with Wybie Lovat, a weird boy who is living with his grandmother. They meet near an old well that is being buried. And Wybie accidentally said that is not usual for his grandmother to allow occupants who have a child to stay in the apartment when Coraline asks why Wybie said he shouldn’t have said that and goes away when his grandmother called.

Wybie is the one who gave the doll that looks like Coraline to her and then her mother gave it to her. And after exploring her new apartment, she found a little door that had been locked and she ask her mother for the key. After asking repeatedly about the key, her mother finally agreed to open the little door in case Coraline doesn’t bother her anymore and she agreed. But it turns out, it is just a door that leads to concrete walls.

The doll and the door are the beginning of a horrid event in Coraline’s life. She just moved in, finding her neighbor are all weird people and have no one else to talk to because her parents are busy, of course, the existence of Beldam easily swayed her or as she told Coraline she is her other mother.

In the other world that at first, she enters the dream, alongside her other parents, all things that Coraline ever wanted are there. A warm mother who cooks delicious food, a cool father and his cool garden, his new friend who doesn’t talk too much, and her neighbor who suddenly turn amusing. Everything has changed except the black cat, who soon would reveal to Coraline that this is not her world to be living in. But for Coraline, this is the perfect world for her so she decided on a whim that she wanted to live here forever. Upon hearing her decision, her other mother offers her the life in here for exchange that she should trade her eyes with the button. This is a symbol that she should give her soul to Beldam. Creepy right?

When Coraline is locked inside the mirror, she finds three ghosts living inside. One of them turns out to be the sister of Wybie’s grandmother. They ask Coraline to find their eyes so they could be free and Coraline did. At the risk of losing her own eyes, she fought Beldam with the help of her neighbor. And finally, she could save her parents and set the three ghosts free. 

Coraline’s movie was adapted from a book written by Neil Gaiman, first published on February 24th, 2002. I suggest that you also have to read the book to experience more scary things about Beldam.

The appearance of Beldam in the movie is scary enough, with metallic hands that look like sewing needles, which is apparently could still in functions after being separated from its body. They described the Beldam in the movie as a tall creature with a metallic body and button eyes. The Beldam is also a shapeshifter, she could easily become anything to manipulate her victim, in the movie she is shape-shifting into Coraline’s mother and also a spider. She can also make illusions and create an entire world based on the child’s favorite things to lure them in. She can also control the surrounding weather. as the children ghost said about The Beldam that Beldam spied on them through the doll she made that looks exactly like them and saw their lives that aren’t happy, and then she lures them with all the things they want and they let her sew the button on their eyes as a symbol to let Beldam eat their souls. Their souls are trapped inside the mirror on Beldam’s house because Beldam hides their eyes so their souls can’t be free. The folklore about Beldam is quite interesting, Beldam or Belle-dame is another word for witch or hag, although the two are not the same thing. A beldam has been referenced in several legends across the globe. From Romanian folklore, Beldam is similar to Muma Pădurii. Muma Pădurii is a spirit of the forest in a hideous appearance and an old woman’s body. Sometimes she can change her shape. She lives in a dark, dreadful, hidden little house. She is thought to attack children and because of this, a large variety of spells are used against her. This mother of the forest kidnaps little children and enslaves them. In one popular story, at some point, she tries to boil a little girl alive in a soup. However, the little girl’s brother outsmarts Muma Pădurii and pushes the woman-monster in the oven instead, similar to the story of Hansel and Gretel. The story ends on a cheerful note when all kids are free to go back to their parents.

Another folklore, The Beldam or La Belle Dame, is based on a ballad written by an English poet, John Keats (1795–1821). In this ballad, the creature of Beldam is a very beautiful girl in the forest, luring knights who resting on the forest. Beldam would enter their dream and seduce them, make love with them and then the knight will awake but it’s already indifferent world or as the poem said “And I awoke and found me here, On the cold hill’s side.”

Although it is not particularly similar, there is also folklore from Indonesia with a creature called “Wewe Gombel”. It is a creature who would kidnap a child and hide them away inside a bamboo forest. The child is often encouraged to go home before the sunset or before Maghrib prayer or Wewe Gombel would kidnap them. The story of this creature that was passed around my childhood is that this Wewe Gombel is once human and she lost her child, after that she started to kidnap the child to replace her own and sometimes she would return the child within a week and during that time, the child was kept hidden from the normal eyes and only paranormal could see whereabouts of the children. The story also said the child who is kidnapped is being fed by her milk and that she didn’t do any harm to them because she loves all the children she takes.

In the modern world, a creature like Beldam who is luring a child to go with them seems like a child predator, they often spied on the child whose parents aren’t attentive enough and lures them with everything and then kidnap them when there is a possibility. They are as scary as Beldam in real-life form.

In the end, I hope there is a prequel of Coraline that tells a story of Beldam origin and how the first children’s ghosts were kidnapped. Because I’m a big fan of this story, both book, and movie.

Overall, as I said in the beginning, this is a great movie and it is safe to watch with your families and for children around age 6 and above because of how scary the Beldam appearance might be for little kids. So If you are a fan of movies that is frightening and have a scary monster with an interesting story, this is the movie for you. My rate for this “lovely” movie is 10/10, happy watching!