I've never seen Mulan On the big screen. The press screening on March 19 in San Francisco has been canceled. The March 27 release has been postponed. For months I have taken shelter at home and wondered about the fate of this film (and movies in general in this pandemic). When I finally watched MulanIt was on a small screen, which is kind of a tragedy. Mulan is a film that deserves the full cinematic experience, from the graphics to the carefully crafted costumes and hairstyles. The film team agrees.
"We shot the film as a film for the big screen," says Mandy Walker, Mulan's cameraman. "We want people to see it in the cinema." I spoke to Walker in July before the decision to stream the film was announced.
Directed by New Zealand filmmaker Niki Caro (The Zookeeper's Wife), Mulan is a live-action adaptation of the 1998 Disney animated classic. Set during the Chinese Tang Dynasty, it is steeped in just the right amount of fantasy and adventure. He follows Mulan (Yifei Liu), from the young woman to the brave warrior.
"I'm sad because it's such an epic film, a movie," said the film's costume designer, Bina Daigeler, via video chat from Berlin when I asked about the streaming release. "It's a sad side effect of the coronavirus."
The silver lining for the film's digital debut, Daigeler said, is that audiences can at least finally see the crew's work, if not on the big screen. The film will be premiered Disney Plus on Friday.
A set run by women
Telling a story inspired by the 6th century poem The Ballad of Mulan, Caro did not shy away from the spectacle. With a budget of $ 200 million, she had responsibility for a major Hollywood production on her shoulders. A responsibility that up to now has rarely been entrusted to a director and that she shared with a team of capable women in her crew.
"It's important that women support other women," said make-up, hair and prosthesis designer Denise Kum during a video chat from London when I asked about her work with Caro. "Niki has a nice thing, she's holding the door open to get so many women through."
Baigeler, who referred to the director as a collaborator, emphasized the camaraderie on Caro's sets. "She always puts together a great crew."
"We didn't miss our schedule a day," added Walker, noting Caro's organizational skills on set.
"We had three women behind the cameras," said Walker, referring to himself, Caro and the film's first assistant director, Liz Tan. Mulan is a woman's most expensive live-action film. "We were very aware of that fact. Because we're all strong women anyway, we all thought this was a great opportunity. We wanted to do the film really well and show it to everyone."
Doing Mulan right
One of Mulan's biggest challenges was getting the fight sequences right. A second unit shot landscapes and backgrounds in China, while the main unit was in New Zealand to use as little CGI as possible. They worked and rehearsed extensively with numerous stunt doubles, extras and horses. Caro wanted the plot to focus on the character of Mulan and cover the plot in an elegant and choreographed way.
Because of these stylized battles, costume designer Daigeler was faced with the challenge of creating armor for Mulan that would follow her movements. "What Yifei does as Mulan is almost like a ballet performance," she said. "I really assumed she was a warrior."
The costume designer also revealed the tricks required to carry out Mulan's many transformations. The character goes from girl to woman and then pretends to be a boy who becomes a man in the army. The armor Mulan wears while pretending to be a man hides her figure, but when Mulan takes off that armor, Daigeler makes sure that her bright red tunic goes better with Liu's body.
But it is Mulan's hair that reveals her greatest transformation. In the animated film, Mulan cuts her hair to be considered a man. Not here. As a soldier, she ties it back into a bun and lets go of it later. "The hair did its own stunts half the time," says Kum.
The hair and makeup designer stated that they didn't use a full wig because they wanted to use the natural movement of the hair. But looking natural still requires a touch of movie magic. "She had so many hair pieces in there that everything had to be tinted and baked individually so it really looked like it was just the wind [moving it]"Declared Kum.
However, do not try to imitate Mulan's gaze at home. Without Kum's team of makeup professionals who strive for unobtrusive perfection, this may not be that easy to achieve. Using strategically placed dirt in the sequences where Mulan pretended to be a man, the makeup team sculpted Liu's jaws and sculpted her face. They then improved the color when she transformed into a warrior. Even if it looks like she doesn't have makeup on, she does. "What looks subtle and natural takes a lot of thought and examination," said Kum.
Nothing has been left to chance in Mulan.
Even if this is a movie designed for cinema consumption, I still loved it while streaming it. It gave me the opportunity to finally enjoy the unfolding of this powerful story of a supportive team where women were allowed to take risks.
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