A mature epiphany

Rating: 10/10 (11 April 2010)

This film is the most surprising adaptation of this typically Victorian novel for children written by Lewis Carroll and published in 1865, one hundred and fifty years ago. Centered on a woman, Alice, it is a memento about the role of women in society and their necessary liberation. The queen was Victoria and as such was setting an example, and in 1865 she was still young. Lewis Carroll with his two queens fighting for supremacy and the crown is providing a caricature of what the world would be if only women were at the top and that is a direct allusion to the debate of the time when Queen Victoria became a widow and refused to remarry. Behind this discourse about the liberation of women, or rather the promotion of women into responsible positions in the world, there is the discourse that they need men to stabilize and balance their government, their authority. It is obvious that Alice ending up as the captain (really?) of a colonial ship is the modern addition to the tale.
But this story is of course the matrix of a tremendous amount of children's literature in England, though rarely so much oriented on women. We can think of The Chronicles of Narnia by another Lewis, C.S. this one, where girls and boys are more equally balanced. And in this case there is also at the beginning a tyrannical queen. We could on the other hand think of Tolkien and his Hobbit or his Lord of the Ring and there men and boys, all males of course, are vastly dominant and we go back to the plain old pattern. This being said what is the creative dimension of this particularly adaptation?
First of all the technique is using all kinds of tricks to manipulate the pictures and make people disappear or appear, the cat particularly. Along the same line it uses monstrous beings like the Jabberwocky, or distorted beings like the two fat boys. On the other hand some are supremely realistic like the dogs. He is also able to use a mixture of digitally mastered beings like the card soldiers within a "natural" setting and with human actors. But those techniques are now very standardized in the cinema with Dreamworks Studios for example or the various Star Wars films.
The second originality of this film is that it is entirely in full colors, and the dark scenes are rare, in the forest a little bit and a couple of night scenes. But otherwise it is luxuriant in colors, both the real world and Wonderland, called Underland or not. I must admit too that the fall in the dark hole is extravagant and brilliantly composed.
The third element is of course the use of the strange mysterious language the hatter and some others practice. That language is typical of Lewis Carroll who has been using that type of meaningless gibberish language in many poems too, like The Hunting of the Snark. Lewis Carroll was a mathematical mind in a way and he considered that what Saussure was going to call the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign was absolute and thus anyone could invent new signs, meaning words, as long as the syntax, the formal rules associating these words, and the intonation were respected. So in his world "Fridig imeas man flowbaster fluously akum spoul midsten spoof," as long as the intonation centers properly on the modal "man" and the verb "flowbaster." We understand the intonation of what the hatter says not the words but that does not matter because it is the Hatter and he is there to make us believe we are in another universe.
The fourth element is the overflowing of all kinds of feelings and emotions in this film. The characters are suffering, crying, getting angry, fearful and frightened, they start running away and hiding and yet are captured and beheaded while one queen is enjoying such torturing and capital punishment and at the same time the other queen seems to be weak and maybe even impotent. And what is that queen who has taken vows that prevent her from defending her own country and people? That's the aristocratic superiority wrapped up in vows that sound kind of religious. Is she a nun or something? She does not sound very pleasant.
The fifth element I like and dislike at the same time is the forced cohabitation of the red queen and her knight in exile tied up one to the other. That's cruel and useless. Why didn't Tim Burton put them to work at some useful task, not useful for them but useful for the people, like cleaning up their mess and rebuilding the ruins? In other words Tim Burton did not modernize the tale entirely, certainly not enough.
The sixth point is the Hatter. He was of course expected to be great and Johnny Depp makes it outstanding, outscoring, outreaching in all directions and he is really superb, except his last dance, a fudderwupping that looks like no whipping no feathers not at all and which could sound OK on paper but does not look that realistic nor attractive, like some kind of extravaganza by some contorsionist, though I would prefer it here in German, ein Schlangenmensch or eine Schlangenfrau or even why not ein Schlangenweib. But that sounds and looks barbaric. I am sure Tim Burton could have thought of something more realistic that children could have imitated like some voodoo trance extreme dancing. That's Tim Burton's problem: at times he overuses his technology and seems to think a technical prank has to be artistically good. But it is not always the case.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU