Alice in Wonderland

I’m probably the last person on earth to watch Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland (2010) one of the world’s highest grossing box office movie successes. So, it’s probably redundant to offer much of a plot synopsis. The dream story is framed by Alice’s real life in Victorian England, where she’s faced with society’s expectations of a nineteen-year old girl. The fabulously fantastic events that unfurl after falling down the rabbit hole are in essence a girl’s quest to find herself, or, her “muchness” in the story’s parlance – not to be too small and not too tall, know right from wrong, face her demons, befriend the Bandersnatch, not to live her life pleasing others, imagine six impossible things before breakfast, slay the Jabberwock on frabjous day, and find her way back home. Callooh! Callay! It’s a story to which we can all relate, because we are all on a quest to find ourselves amidst society’s expectations. I’m impressed that Burton and his writers created an actual story from Carroll’s source material of deliberately unrelated nonsensical yet funny events. It smacks a little too much of modern female empowerment, but you might say that makes the story more relevant – just as the rebellion against terrorizing tyranny has a contemporary ring to it.

The fantastical landscape, while Disneyfied, remains recognizably Burton – and in a way is a character all by itself. It lives, sometimes literally, in the sense that for instance the Red Queen’s palace is filled with animals functioning as furniture. However, the main characters themselves are what make the film. Mia Wasikowska’s performance as Alice has just the right combination of naïveté and determination for the part. Johnny Depp seems to be stuck in acting weirdos (Jack Sparrow, The Libertine, Willy Wonka, Sweeney Todd, etc.) – to the point of getting predictable. Here, his Mad Hatter Tarrant Hightopp has an interesting blend of craziness and sadness, but I found his flow of accents rather annoying. Supposedly, that was meant to reflect the character’s moods, but it hardly came through – at least not for me. Helena Bonham Carter’s Red Queen was, on the contrary, spot on: a spoiled toddler with absolute power to make everyone’s lives miserable. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen seemed entirely miscast. I can’t tell what they were going for, but she has little in common with Carroll’s illogical, absentminded White Queen who lives her life in reverse and thus can remember future events. I would have wished that Crispin Glover’s Knave of Hearts was more evil, instead of such a spineless weasel.

For Carroll die-hards there are several irks, too. I’m not saying that I’ve caught them all, but, to give you an example, “Jabberwocky” is the name of a poem about the Jabberwock (without the –y suffix), “with eyes of flame,” that “came whiffling through the tulgey wood, and burbled as it came!” Depp mispronounces “borogoves” as “borogroves” (with an additional –r- in groves). Similarly, I was surprised by the pronunciation of “upelkuchen” like “uppelkutshen” (which sounds like the Dutch word “huppelkutje” that I best not translate), while “kuchen” must have been borrowed from the German word for cake (pronounced “kookhen, [kuːxən]),” with a velar fricative like the Spanish j or the English “loch”). In all, I am left with mixed feelings. Some aspects were enjoyable: the story itself was entertaining, some of the performances were good, and they did honor to the original without sticking too closely to Carroll. Yet I do have qualms about other aspects: the story lost some of the absurdity of the original, the animations didn’t mash too well with the real life actors, and some performances were fairly lame. It’s not a film I would enthusiastically recommend, but then again, everybody else has already seen it.