Hansel and Gretel, Mikhail Vrubel, 1896
Warning: Major spoilers for Skinamarink!!
I watched Skinamarink because people kept comparing it to a David Lynch film, which is the fastest way to get me to watch/read something. I enjoyed the oddness and experimentation of lingering on the menacing features of a darkened house, but as I watched it, I didn't think I was afraid. After the movie was over, though, I went to get a glass of water and realized that my hands were shaking.
The film’s portrayal of innocence lost and utter hopelessness haunted me the most. The more I analyzed the elements of the movie, the more uncertain I was of its meaning. Definitely watch this movie if you like waking up at 3 am and staring at the (now creepy-looking) ceiling and thinking but what did the Legos mean?
One breadcrumb (sorry!) that director Kyle Edward Ball leaves is “If people pay attention, they see it’s basically a Hansel and Gretel story.” There are, after all, two siblings, a boy and a girl, trapped in a house that has become as dangerous as the woods at night. The parents might or might not have intended to abandon them, but either way, the children are all alone. They are also clearly in the grips of an evil entity (whether literal or metaphorical) like the witch from the fairy tale.
The cartoons they watch are great clues. If you're interested in teasing out more meaning from the film, I recommend reading their plots and musing on them, and then telling me what the heck you think they mean so I can stop wondering. The Wikipedia page for Skinamarink links to these cartoons.
Like “Hansel and Gretel,” most of these cartoons are about an unfortunate pair suffering from deprivation or peril or torture of some kind, yet who emerge victorious. In one cartoon, the pair is rescued by the compassion of others, and in another by their fellow townspeople going to war against the evil entity. In two of the cartoons, they are saved when the stronger member of the pair outwits or overpowers the evil entity.
The premise of “Hansel and Gretel” is that their family (and perhaps the entire country) has fallen on hard times, and their parents abandon them in the woods because they can't feed them anymore. It is the mother or stepmother (depending on which version you read) who suggests this course of action, and the father objects but ultimately complies. After all, they seem to be in a hopeless situation.
The children are clever, though. Hansel’s optimism gives them the will to survive, and Gretel’s savvy gives them the means. Gretel is hobbled by despair in the beginning of the story, but Hansel assures her they’ll be all right. He is the one to think of the trick of leaving stones and then breadcrumbs to find their way back to the house after being abandoned in the woods by their parents. The stones work the first time, but the breadcrumbs are eaten by birds. (Note that there’s a scene in Skinamarink featuring a cartoon flock of birds and loud chirping.)
They would have starved in the woods, presumably, but they discover a gingerbread house covered with candy, and this dreamlike structure sustains them at first (the way that toys and cartoons sustain Kevin and Kaylee). Unfortunately, the inhabitant of the house is a witch who wants to eat them. Does the monster in Skinamarink want to eat the children? In some sense, it must. It wants to play games to hurt them, presumably to feed on their pain.
The witch decides to eat Hansel first, so she cages him and feeds him the most delectable treats to prepare him for slaughter. She makes Gretel her servant, barely feeding her and working her ragged. If Gretel hadn’t been smart, she would have thought she was getting the raw end of the deal. Instead, the children come up with a plan to stall the witch. Whenever the witch asks Hansel to stick out his finger to see if it’s plump enough for her to eat him, he instead sticks out an old chicken bone. It’s hard for her to see Hansel. Maybe because she keeps his prison so dark?
The witch is thwarted for a while, but she finally decides to eat him anyway. She also feels hungry enough by that point to eat two children, so she asks Gretel to climb inside the oven to check if it’s hot enough so she can cook her, too. Gretel outsmarts her by telling her she doesn’t know how to do this. The witch climbs into the oven to show her how, and then Gretel shuts the witch in the oven, killing her. Gretel lets Hansel out of his cage, and the two find jewels in the witch’s house and gather them up to take home. Since their home is a place of terrible want, these jewels will provide the wealth necessary to save them. When they return home, the cruel mother (or stepmother, again, depending on who you ask) is dead, and their father rejoices to see them. They share their jewels with him, and we assume their lives become happy and safe.
Is Skinamarink telling us this vision is too optimistic? Maybe Kevin and Kaylee are children who died in the witch’s house instead of escaping, or who are subject to her torture forever, never outsmarting her.
At some point during what you might call the second act of the movie, Kaylee disappears. When the monster’s voice tells Kevin to go to the basement, he sees something awful there, a dim vision of Kaylee with skin covering her mouth and one of her eyes.
Some viewers say that both her eyes are missing, but I’m fairly certain that her left eye is gone, but her right eye remains. This theme is echoed later in the film when the monster’s voice tells Kevin to stick a knife into his eye. (As a side note, that part really got to me. Intrusive thoughts, anyone?) The fact that each sibling has one eye symbolically intact makes me think that the monster (the witch, the house, their unconscious, their family trauma, or whatever) hasn’t annihilated them yet.
The movie’s ending has frustrated many viewers, of course. A barely-visible outline of a face tells Kevin to go to sleep after he asks if he can watch something happy. Then Kevin asks the entity what its name is, and he receives no reply. Then total darkness. Does this mean Kevin is truly dead, or has he simply gone to sleep, perchance to a dream within a dream? The story of “Hansel and Gretel” never tells us how long the children are stuck in the witch’s house. For all we know, it could have been 572 days or more. Maybe time stops in the witch’s house. Maybe it takes a long time for kids to grow up enough to lose their innocence and put away childish things so they can defeat the witch. Prolonging their own imprisonment might give them time to acquire the qualities needed to save themselves.
I like to think that this film ends with Kevin still in the cage and Kaylee still in servitude to the monster, just before Kaylee figures out how to kill the witch for good. In the cartoons the children watch, the pairs in peril all overcome their oppressors in the end. In most of the cartoons, the pairs also receive help from others who are tortured, or from outsiders. Adults. Maybe the 911 call goes through somehow, eventually, even on a toy phone. The act of trying to connect with something or someone outside of the pain might ultimately be rewarded.
I enjoyed the ways the film experimented with plot and character and pacing, and now I’m waiting for the sequel. Maybe the ending of “Hansel and Gretel” strikes us as too good to be true. It’s one thing to escape, but to find something in the dead witch’s house to sustain you for the rest of your life? Pockets full of jewels? But German fairy tales are rarely optimistic. Surely Hansel and Gretel, if real, would always be haunted by the trauma they encountered. And yet, they find a way to be safe in spite of it all. They find a way to be happy. And the very source of their wealth is found in the house of their captor. Have you ever found some life-giving wisdom (a jewellike night-light in the darkness) in a terrible situation?
I've been mainlining Skinamarink stuff, so I was pleased to see this article. Didn't even enjoy my experience watching the film in theaters, but it had an amazing after-effect and the movie was on my mind for days and I have immensely enjoyed reading dissections and theories online. So, I've definitely turned a corner on the film. Still debating on whether I should watch it again, but I really dug the director's precursor short film, "Heck".
Definitely want to see more folk drill down on the Hansel and Gretel thread. Good pointer to explore the cartoons more too!