A masterful reworking of a classic

Rating: 10/10 (5 February 2012)

To me it is very hard not to give this movie a 10 (I don't like giving away too many 10s) because I find it very difficult to find anything I don't like about the movie. To me it is a masterpiece. The characters are very well defined, the actors play their roles very well, and the movie moves at a very good pace, leaving time to breath, but also keeping you enthralled. Tim Burton is a masterful film-maker, and his films do tend to be of the highest quality (ignoring Batman of course). In this film he revisits the story of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (as well as Jaberwocky and Through the Looking Glass) and though it may reflect events in these previous stories, it is not the book that Lewis Carrol originally wrote.
Alice is now 19 and she has been haunted by strange dreams since she was a young girl. She is a very imaginative girl, and her father always encouraged her imagination, however he is now gone, and she is expected, at the age of 19, to become a proper English lady, so is taken to a party to get married. We can see from the beginning that she is not the normal English aristocratic girl, but is fed lies (such as you really don't want to turn out like Aunt Imogen, and that this guy is the only guy that will make her life complete) but she can see that the choice she must make will affect the rest of her life.
While she is wondering around the party, she catches glimpses of the White Rabbit, and is also remembering scenes from her childhood (such as painting white roses red), but when the question is finally asked of her, she flees, and falls down a hole after the White Rabbit, and lands up in Underland. This is one of the changes that Burton has applied to this realm. While the original story was a nonsense tale written for children, Burton has turned it into a true fantasy tale. As soon as Alice steps out of the tree into Underland, we immediately see Tim Burton's touch to this story, with the strange and fantastic realms that are characteristic of his movies.
It turns out that Alice has been prepared for this moment as she is the one ordained to slay the Jabberwock and to free Underland from the Tyranny of the Queen of Hearts. It is the Jabberwock that gives the queen her power, and as soon as it is taken away from her, she is beaten and exiled. I always love a film that ends with the antagonist being exiled as it, to me, is a greater punishment than death. Death is the great unknown, whereas exile keeps the person alive, while forever reminding them of the crimes that they committed (though it is not always the case, as an exiled person can simply burn with rage and seek vengeance).
This film is a fantasy quest, in that the quest that Alice undertakes is reflective of her quest to come to understand who she is and her role in the world. While the events in Underland take place over a number of days, only five minutes pass in the real world, though it is in these five minutes that Alice comes to discover who she is. She begins denying her destiny, and then comes to understand that the only person who is in charge of her destiny is herself. However, in discovering this, and taking a stand, it becomes clear that it was destiny for her to reach this moment. It is then when she draws the vorpal sword, and believes that she can slay the Jabberwock, that she truly comes into her own.
We see this as the film winds up magnificently. The slaying of the Jabberwock, and the freeing of Underland is not the end of the film. Alice returns to the real world, and while some may become despondent in returning to the same old boring world, Alice is not, and takes what she learns. She is an adventurer at heart, not an English lady. It is her desire to travel the world, and to pick up where her father left off. While it may be somewhat unrealistic for her to go into business with an English gentleman at this point in history, we need to remember that she is a lady of high standing, so we cannot have her running off into the underground. Instead she retains the image of the heroine as the move closes with her boarding the ship, taking pride of place, and sailing off to China where no doubt she will face many new adventures.