Imagining Tim Burton

Rating: 7/10 (9 March 2010)

It's a challenge for someone like Tim Burton to do an adaptation of the Alice books by Lewis Carroll. You see, Burton has never been and could never be recognized for his writing, most of which he doesn't do. What I mean is that he always starts from scratch, as he bases his movies on things to create especially breathtaking worlds. His art has always been more on the visual side than on the storytelling, and in many ways his "Alice in Wonderland" is a confirmation of this and of his talents as an author; his capacity to remain unchangeable through everything.
He doesn't have to, but apparently he wants to and, if anything, his "Alice" is the new expression of a co-existent universe that persists among all of his films. This universe is also coherent, because visually it has a special, recognizable mood, always accompanied delightfully by Danny Elfman's original music. Seeing Alice opening that little door and entering Neverland is not very different from Ichabod Crane's recurrent dream in "Sleepy Hollow", or from Edward Bloom's arrival to Spectre in "Big Fish", for that matter.
What else can I tell you about a story we all know? What else can I suggest than going in and see for yourselves what Tim Burton has made with it, visually? Cinema being a visual art and Burton being a visual master, the result is, and this should be a unanimous thought, one dazzling set after another, with a particular choice of color and light that should be related to the characters who inhabit each one. The most interesting of these choices might be the normal world Alice lives in; a boring, organized, aristocratic, choreographed London that Burton shoots with irony, occasionally transforming it into something more edgy with the thoughts of Alice's imagination (imagination is the key to every Tim Burton movie).
If you don't know the characters, any review should say nothing about them so the movie ride becomes a bit more unpredictable and surprising. It's clearly a story that screenwriter Linda Woolverton (who wrote "The Lion King" among other Disney features) thought about once and wrote without expecting many changes, and probably Chris Lebenzon treated the editing process the same way.
The story and its development, obvious and rudimentary, adds nothing new to the table. But the movie reminds us that the co-existence of a whole universe among all the Burton films is not only visual; this universe also exists thematically. Maybe the director was never able to sustain a complete story â€“he doesn't achieve it here- and maybe now I realize (I was telling Grillo) the reason I love "Big Fish" so much is because, like I said in my review, it's a "collection of beautiful scenes that don't cease to amaze us"; therefore so many little stories that don't have to be explained and completely resolve, have more weight than the story of a man and his son that is the movie, which, by the way, is the movie's point: "The man becomes his stories".
But that man, Edward Bloom, was one of Burton's outcasts, nostalgic and imaginative (again, the key to any Burton movie), constantly going back to his childhood years, where unresolved dreams and issues always awaited the mentioned Ichabod Crane, and an Edward who wanted to have real hands, and a Willy Wonka who wanted his father to be proud of him. In this way (and there's probably things I'm missing that will come back soon or revisiting the director's films), it's perfectly clear that the Mad Hatter (the most developed character in this movie; there always has to be one above the rest) has lost his head and is always looking for a sense of 'whatever you wanna call it' in his life; you can see it in his crazy eyes. With or without Alice. Before and after her.
And some people still wonder why Johnny Depp is the absolute protagonist of the film.
Special note: The portrayal of Alice by Mia Wasikowska, which will never be recognized, is one of the best performances you'll ever see in this genre. The idea of a child who wants to dream but knows that it should be impossible at a particular stage of life; a constant disbelief for everything she sees that can be perceived in her look and annoying tone of voice; a little girl who's becoming a woman but knows her father spoiled her too much and it will be difficult to change that and accept maturity. A girl without self confidence, even when she knows she has all the answers.