I recently saw Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland in 3D (though I probably would’ve loved it just as much with no silly glasses involved), and I have to say it has both piqued my interest in Lewis Carroll’s works and given a new reflection on the world he created. Not that this is the first adaptation. Disney’s animated version of Alice in Wonderland may be a follow up review to this one and there is also a little known video game called American McGee’s Alice featuring very bizarre and twisted portrayals of characters such as the Cheshire Cat and Mad Hatter. But onto my review of the recent revival of the classic.
This movie, like many adaptations, blends together characters from both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. The involvement of the Red and White Queens and Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum are both references to Through the Looking Glass while the references to the White Rabbit, the Card Soldiers, the Queen of Hearts, the Caterpillar and the Mad Tea Party characters are links to Adventures in Wonderland. And the references to the Jabberwocky, Vorpal Sword, Jubjub Bird and the Bandersnatch are all from the poem "Jabberwocky" by Carroll. But enough Carroll fandom explanation for the moment.
The plot involves Alice as a child having nightmares about associated things in a yet unnamed Wonderland, such as a blue caterpillar and talking flowers and the rabbit in a waistcoat. And her father comforts her saying that even though she may be insane, the best people always are. This connects as well with a quote from Mr. Kingsley that “In order to achieve the impossible, you must believe it is possible,” This theme is used since the entire film is based in literary nonsense to begin with. But it does make one reconsider how one judges so called insane people as still holding some insight about the world around us. However much a plot may exist, many things are meant to not make sense, such as the Mad Hatter’s persistent question “Why is a raven like a writing desk?” Alice goes to a party 13 years later (that’s what it says) with her mother where it is revealed she is to be engaged to a Lord Hamish Ascot. She refuses (not in so many words) and leaves, following the white rabbit she has been seeing since she arrived at the party. From there she falls into the expected hole and events pass which remind one of the Disney adaptation. Eventually she meets some of the Wonderland characters we know so well, such as the Dodo, the Dormouse, Tweedle Dee and Dum and the White Rabbit himself. They guide her to speak to the blue caterpillar smoking a hookah or some such smoking object and he confuses them, making her think she’s the “wrong Alice”. They speak of her slaying the Jabberwocky in the not so distant future with the Vorpal Sword and she is not exactly pleased at this news. But the forces of the Red Queen suddenly attack and Alice barely manages to escape from the Bandersnatch. She meets the Cheshire Cat who introduces her to the Mad Hatter and March Hare, and reacquaints us with the Dormouse, much more jovial and happy than the narcoleptic version from Disney. Eventually Alice has to be hidden away again from the Knave of Hearts and eventually, through a somewhat complex series of events, goes to the Red Queen’s castle and befriends the Red Queen and saves the Hatter from being killed. After more events, primarily searching for the fabled Vorpal Sword that she will use, Alice makes friends with the Bandersnatch (I won’t spoil how) she runs away with the sword and all her animal friends and meets the White Queen. After more mixing of strange potions, she talks to Absolem the caterpillar again and finds out that her nightmares were actually a bigger revelation about her connection to Underland/Wonderland (It’s confusing me too). She then takes on the role of the White Queen’s champion and after a drawn out battle that also involves the Red and White Queen’s card and chess themed armies fighting each other, slays the Jabberwocky’s (in an ironic fashion related to a certain character from Adventures in Wonderland. Afterwards she returns to real life, not knowing whether it was a dream or not, rejects the proposal and becomes a successful businesswoman (I won’t spoil exactly what kind of business though, you’ll find that out yourself). And so without spoiling much, I’ve explained the narrative and script, so now I’ll get into characters, at least the 4 most important.
Alice is our main protagonist, played by Mia Wasikowska (at least her adult self is). She’s hardly a conformist and through the progress of the film changes from a reluctant but strong willed maiden to a confident and independent minded woman. She is supplanted by many other characters, such as the Dormouse (a female one) who uses a tiny pin to stab people in the eyes. There’s also Tweedle Dee and Dum, who look like kids with birth defects gone wrong and exhibit so much stupidity they’re used as entertainment by the Red Queen when she’s bored. And of course the Cheshire Cat, who’s very blue and green this time around as opposed to the purple and pink from Disney’s animated adaptation. His voice has been changed as well to a deeper tone which still manages to be depicted as a mysterious and enigmatic type of figure. Absolem the Caterpillar, voiced by Alan Rickman, is a subtly involved character who reveals a plot point I kept as secret as I could in the final third of the film. The Mad Hatter, performed by Johnny Depp, is equally important in his own fashion of motivating Alice to change as well as being the most insane character in the entire series next to his companions the March Hare, a spastic neurotic jittery thing that throws all manner of things around and the Cheshire Cat, who is a surprising ally at times to the orange haired maker of hats. He manifests a bit of bipolar personality disorder when reciting the Jabberwocky poem in a deeper and more Welsh accent of sorts, not to mention with other issues he has in relation to Alice and the White Queen. Speaking of which, the Red and White Queens are both important, though the Red Queen, played by Helena Bonham Carter, serves as the obvious primary antagonist. Her big head seems odd, but this is a world where people pour tea through broken cups and speak in garbled logic to try to make some Zen-like point, so physical oddities like hers are the least of my concerns. She treats animals like crap and the only thing making her a reference to the Queen of Hearts is her constant use of the phrase “Off with their head!” The White Queen, Anne Hathaway’s character, is a latecomer in the film, so her role is subdued by her helping out Alice, not to mention she’s a pacifist who won’t hurt a fly (literally), so all in all, she’s practically neutral in the whole conflict. The Red Queen’s sidekick the Knave of Hearts, depicted by Crispin Glover, also from Through the Looking Glass, is her errand boy, searching for Alice, seeking out the Vorpal Sword and being otherwise in control of everything that needs to be done at the Queen’s orders. He seems to have some sort of fetish for her large head, but then kind of turns on that in the conclusion (no surprise there). Other characters such as the Dodo and the White Rabbit are much more incidental characters, but the Jabberwocky doesn’t really appear much and I’d say he’s still quite cool for however brief his on screen appearance was.
There are only two really important themes that are interconnected in how the movie plays out. The first is quite obvious in the first 10 minutes of the film, with Alice being pressured to conform and her refusal or avoidance of the issue. Throughout the film she insists that she is the arbiter of her own path and this actually works out in her favor progressively, even with the supposedly predestined act of her slaying the Jabberwocky with the Vorpal Sword and all. And in time the idea becomes very easy to understand; one should not live life to please others, but should forge one’s own path and makes choices because you choose to, not because you’re pressured into them. Alice even forgets who she is in relation to Wonderland because of the peer pressure manifest by everyone around her in the real world, so it follows reason that identity is innately understood in the film to be an individual thing instead of a group collision that creates some monstrous figure of hypocrisy. This links indirectly with the other theme that considers both the obvious surrealism that comes with the territory of what may very well be a head trauma induced hallucination, but which also leaves Alice a very changed person. And as her father says, the best people are insane in some way or another, be that in the eyes of popular culture or just insane in that they have occasional visions of anthropomorphic animals and talking flowers and nonsensical creatures like the Jabberwocky. But all in all, the notion that reality and fantasy tread a fine line comes out splendidly in the film’s portrayal, whether you watch it in 3D or not. Effects wise, I can sum it up by saying that either way (2D or 3D) the environment absorbs you in and the characters are of the ilk of computer animation that borders on realism, so that you don’t even care that an animal is talking or that the Red Queen’s head is three times larger than necessary or any of the other “6 impossible things believed before breakfast”, since the movie suspends your disbelief quite early on to begin with.
I’m not really going to complain about continuity with canon, since in order to make a creative and genuinely interesting film in relation to Carroll’s novels, you have to take a lot of liberties and basically mishmash his ideas together. American McGee’s Alice did something quite similar, and frankly it had even more difficulty, since it had to create a gameplay system and weapons, enemies, bosses and a story that’s probably longer than either adaptation by Disney. I didn’t even realize there was a pornographic adaptation of this in the 70s, but heck, I wasn’t born then and I’m not a connoisseur of such things to begin with. If I had to rate this, I would definitely grant it a 5 and probably a 100% recommendation, regardless, since you’d practically have to be a robot to not appreciate the general appeal of Wonderland and associated figures and tropes as well as many things you may have already seen in pop culture even without exposure to Alice in Wonderland. So here’s hoping I will start a review of the 1951 version by the end of the week. Until next time, Namaste and aloha.
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