Alice in Wonderland (2010) - Wearing Two Hats  
| When I was a child, the story of Alice in Wonderland infuriated me. As a young person trying to make sense of the world around me, being tossed into a world that was all about tearing down sense was an impossible hurdle to me. The non-sense, the madness, logic spiraling into illogical consequences was exasperating. As I aged, and became more comfortable with the grey areas, more understanding of the role of perspective and appreciative of the deconstruction of so-called "common sense," the story took on a whole new meaning and I gained a new admiration for Lewis Carroll's work.
But the ideas are still a bit terrifying, aren't they? We want so desperately to build up a new "sensibility" as we tear down the one we find oppressive. Carroll keeps challenging our ideas of right and wrong, up and down. Wonderland is a puzzle that is unsettling if not down right terrifying. A puzzle that helps us understand just how complicated we are and how loose our grip really is.
And I've been waiting for a film to capture that. I thought if anyone could do it, it would be Tim Burton who so masterfully captured the Roald Dahl novel and the Sondheim operetta. And he manages to find a taste of that. He creates the Wonderland of my nightmares. The images are there. The madness is seeping out of each frame. He has crafted a world where you could go mad. But it is the script that is far to sane to flesh out Alice's (and necessarily our) struggles.
In screenwriter Linda Woolverton's hands, Alice in Wonderland looses all that it is about to become some proto-feminist melodrama. Many have compared it to the Narnia movies which I think is a poor comparison as those films were attempting (and succeeding) to do something completely different than what Alice is all about. Here we have a very straight forward narrative of a battle to overcome oppression. This linear tale feels incredibly mundane and, dare I say it, sane.
There is no madness in Alice in Wonderland. The characters (from Depp's Mad Hatter to even Bonham Carter's Red Queen) all act very rationally, motivated by clear impulses to achieve understood goals. This is ideological not irrational. I couldn't wrap my head around why it was so easy to wrap my head around what was going on.
And it is disjointed from the world Burton had created which is just dark and twisted enough to allow for a little madness to start creeping in. The characters have never been so perfectly rendered. You could see them descending into insanity. The story keeps this at bay mostly with such a pedestrian plot, a story that will seem all too familiar without offering anything new. This is probably the most wonderfully visualized Wonderland yet but one of the least inspiring. Still glorious to see, and somewhat frightening to behold.
I wanted so badly to step off the path and explore this Wonderland away from the tour guide. It is an incredible place to see but unlikely to be a place I will revisit.
| |
