Short Take: Not as intellectually stimulating as Lewis Carroll's books, but still fun

Director: Tim Burton (Big Fish, Charley and the Chocolate Factory)

Screenwriter: Linda Woolverton (The Lion King, Homeward Bound); based from characters by Lewis Carroll

Cast: Mia Wasikowska (Amelia), Johnny Depp (The Pirates of the Caribbean), Helena Bonham Carter (Sweeny Todd), Anne Hathaway (Rachel Getting Married), Crispin Glover (Charlie’s Angels)

Length: 1h 48m

Synopsis: The same Alice that we’ve come to know from Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass is back, only this time she’s 19. As a young lady of moderate social status and peaking beauty she is expected by her family and peers to wed a Lord and secure her financial future. However before she offers an answer of “yes” or “no” she becomes lost down a familiar rabbit hole all over again, and finds that those in Wonderland have been waiting for her to fulfill a different destiny.

Analysis: Because the story takes place after both of Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” books it is open to practically limitless imagination. In taking the artistic liberty of continuing to expand on Carroll’s often-copied-but-never-duplicated-world one would assume that making a movie audience believe in six impossible things before the halfway point would be easy. To say the least, director Tim Burton does indeed encourage us to believe the impossible. Such incredible things, though, are limited to what we see as opposed to what occurs. By this I mean that elements such as the special effects (e.g. character and set designs) are intended to compete with established logic (talking animals, disappearing cats, etc.), however unlike Carroll’s books the film’s story makes little to no attempt at challenging our philosophies or good senses.

One such good sense that is not challenged is what we have come to know as the law of cause and effect. This law, perhaps by itself, allows us to predict with confidence the likely outcomes of our actions as well as the course of various events throughout the world. If “A” happens, then “B” results. The film seldom deviates from this principle, if ever. Though strange as many of the story’s happenings may be, they still follow causality. This is not always true with Carroll’s books. Just as often as they follow the law of causality, they veer away from it. One example is when at one point in “Through the Looking Glass” Alice went looking for the Red Queen. She first started walking towards the Queen but found herself lost, and only after walking in her opposite direction did she end up finding her. Walking in the opposite direction of where you want to go makes no sense to us, here, but it does to those in Wonderland. This is because in that world even the supposedly inescapable laws of nature can be broken, and are done so in a way that abides by its inhabitants’ formulated logic. Think of it as a realized Escher painting.

The reason why it’s worth noting a greater connection between our world and Wonderland as it is depicted in this film, than the connections between our world and the Wonderland and Looking Glass worlds in Carroll’s books is because this greater connectivity leads to a different interpretation of Alice’s character (for better or worse). In the books, Alice is forced to comply with strange natural laws, etiquette, and logic, but to her credit she is able to take most things in stride by accepting what isn’t “nonsense” on its own terms (a perfect example is her experience with the sides of mushrooms that cause her to grow or shrink, which Disney has of course changed to a potion and piece of cake to avoid drug references). This attitude towards experiencing the new and bizarre is thought of by some to be a great representation of how children learn to live in the real world, as at times they come across laws and logic that they fail to comprehend initially but eventually adopt. In this film, though, Alice is asked to accept only a handful of peculiarities. Her representation here is much less willing to accept Wonderland’s traits, assuming that everything is a dream that she will eventually wake up from (this attitude might have something to do with the fact that she’s now 19 years old and presumably more adapted to our world, but one could also say that the short jump from our reality to this version of Wonderland makes accepting such a world on her presupposed terms easier and thus harder to conceive as anything but a figment of her imagination). Instead of symbolizing childhood learning, she is painted to represent the teenage/adolescent rebellion against conformity and predetermined futures. Before her adventure down the rabbit hole she is pressured to marry a man she doesn’t love so as to appease her mother and fit her cultural role as a child-bearing socialite (mind you this takes place in Victorian England). Likewise, in Wonderland she is told who she is supposed to be, who she couldn’t be, and what she is destined to do (I leave it to you to discover whether she complies). This representation of Alice is in all effect the main message of the film, and its relevance to modern day America (specifically teenage girls?) is open to wide speculation.

Rating: 7.0

Recommendations for Further Reading: “Alice in Wonderland and Philosophy,” edited by Richard Brian Davis (Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series). This book delves into tremendous detail about both “Alice” novels, being a compilation of essays from various credible thinkers who take a number of different schools of thought and apply them to the world of Wonderland and the characters found within. All writings are extremely accessible, avoiding convoluted jargon and favoring simple wording that helps explain even the most complex ideas. A very rewarding read for those interested in exploring the real Wonderland of our imaginations.

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