Last Alice movie for now, lol, I promise – normal service will resume soon. Oh and I did watch this yesterday – well, early this morning – I just, y’know, had to sleep eventually Most of this was written while watching anyway.

I was worried at first here because I have an horrendously dubbed version of this perhaps the creepiest of all Alice adaptations. Luckily, it’s really more about the images and sound effects than anything, the dialogue being mostly either sparse or redundant (I’d say at least 50% of it consists of “said the rabbit” lol which in the end becomes very annoying) – which makes the very first line, “this is a film for children. But remember to shut your eyes, or else you won’t see anything!” deliciously ironic in addition to being a fine warning for those of a sensitive disposition (I’ll just say it was probably unwise of me to add this to the schedule at the last minute as the last thing I watch before bedtime at 4 in the morning, lol – I’m writing this while watching because I’m sure in the morning I’ll either plainly think I dreamt it or will have merged it inseparably with whatever nightmares I might have after a full afternoon and evening of Alice …)

In short, it’s “Alice: The WTF Edition” – the images are so arresting and nightmarish that you genuinely can’t take your eyes off them; the sound and pace so visceral that you genuinely fear for the actress in the lead, for example when the mouse (actually it’s more like a rat here) in the pool of tears sets up camp on her head thinking it’s an island, hammering sticks into her scalp, her only protest “That’s too far!” coming as he tries to set fire to her hair. Perhaps surprisingly given the wacky means by which it’s done, the movie actually stays pretty close to the story – which makes it even more amazing that it feels so unpredictable compared to other adaptations. Each time, for example, that Alice breaks into one of the tiny desks that litter her journey, I found myself seriously not knowing what might come out of it or where she might be taken next or what might happen to her. It somehow lulls you into a state of anxiety, something that’s perfectly understandable when it comes to Alice but that none of the other adaptations really do so well as this one.

At 90 minutes the jerky motion and incessant sound effects certainly start to grate towards the end – I’ve a feeling this might be something that’s not so bad in the original Czech language version with the truly horrible dubbing girl’s voice taken away … in any case, it’s still another great interpretation of the story that’s worth watching if you like seeing things you’ve never seen before.

As expected, though I’m certain I’ve seen this before, when I was way too young to appreciate it (we’re possibly even talking single digits, I think my grandma saw it was about Alice or something and put it on, lol, god bless her), this viewing, with all I know now that I didn’t know then, was far more rewarding. Considering even without that knowledge for most of my life it’s managed to haunt me all these years anyway, and I’ve long intended to watch it again, I think that alone speaks of how stunning a film it really is.

I guess there are three ways you could come to this movie that will profoundly affect the way you take it. Some will know the Alice story but nothing of its author, particularly of his attraction to little girls including Alice Liddell for whom he wrote it. Some will know the whole thing, and of that set of people there will be those who find the relationship between Dodgson/Carroll and Alice unsettling and those who find it as wonderful as wonderland itself.

If you’re in the first set, the movie will almost immediately come as a shock and it’s probably simply best to not recommend it – even if under normal circumstances the idea of a “relationship” developing between a young girl and a man who isn’t family doesn’t strike you as fearfully odd, the juxtaposition of that concept with one of the best-loved children’s stories, not to mention Ian Holm’s admittedly strange performance as Carroll, will probably be enough to tip you over.

If you’re of the second variety, and you long for the movie that “finally” depicts Carroll as the monster he “really was”, then for a while here you might think you’ve discovered the Holy Grail. Like I say, Ian Holm’s performance is very strange. He plays Carroll almost like the android in Alien, or more recently his character in From Hell – he gazes at Alice with seemingly empty eyes and he’s just not the kindly soul you’d ever expect to be so great with the little ones. For a good half hour at the start here I was cringing, thinking perhaps my memory of the movie wasn’t so hot afterall and I was about to witness just about the worst end to my “Alice” day imaginable, lol.

It amazes/saddens me that there’s a message on the movie’s IMDb message board that seems to paint our age in some way superior to the mid-Eighties in which this was produced because, if it were made today, Carroll would be painted as a paedophile monster simple and true. “In 1985,” they write, “you couldn’t do such things without getting into trouble.” Like, wow. Just wow. I’ve dreamt my whole life of the day when we all just saw the worst in things. No – they’ve got it the wrong way around – you couldn’t do this movie today without getting in trouble, that’s the sad thing. (It’s encouraging to note some of the other responses in that thread, though.) (Okay, I’ll admit: there’s Finding Neverland which does kind of address JM Barrie’s thing for little boys without ever going tabloid … but it’s somehow not the same …)

Anyway, consider me one who’s firmly in the latter set. And I’ve got to say, after that first half hour of fearing the worst about Holm’s portrayal of Carroll, etc, I really began to appreciate the obstacles the film makers had clearly thrown in their own way to their objective in the production. Nevermind “warts and all” here, both Carroll in Alice’s memory and Alice herself as an 80-year-old woman in New York are painted almost as nothing but warts at the start. And just as Carroll is seen through Alice’s eyes, writer Dennis Potter brings another character to New York with her, a young orphan called Lucy who seems to be in a wonderland of her own. We see the strangely cold and domineering Alice through her, as well as her interactions with the American entertainment industries.

Alice is first averse to “playing up” her history as “the real Alice” for the American press but this shifts when one reporter reveals she could make money from it. In these scenes we always see Lucy backed away not quite understanding how the Alice who demands the best of manners and etiquette from her and others seems to shift into this almost monstrous way of interacting with the strange world of dollars and cents etc. But like Alice in Wonderland declaring to the royal court, “You’re nothing but a pack of cards!” Lucy too eventually stands up for herself, telling Alice in the diner to, “Shut up, shut up,” and finally ends up romantically involved with the reporter. It’s an incredibly clever subplot.

Coral Browne is incredible as the elderly Alice. There’s a moment right at the start when the main reporter first invokes the name “Dreamchild” to her and you feel the memories beginning to flood back to her over her face, at once joyous yet painful and unwanted. On occasion she almost looks directly into the audience’s eyes, even at one point saying something about feeling as though someone walked over her grave begging the question, is that us, watching this fictionalized version of her? At another stage she comments to the reporter about, “that strange feeling, like what you’re about to say has already been said before …” The movie just connects in such a way on so many levels that are usually left untouched by even the best of films.

As the younger Alice in flashbacks, Amelia Shankley is equally astonishing. The first thing that struck me is how much she actually resembles the real Alice as photographed by Carroll – but the performance soon displaces that purely aesthetic response to her. I wasn’t impressed by her in the Cannon Movie Tales Red Riding Hood which came later, but this is one of the best young performances I’ve seen – and considering the character, that’s particularly important.

The Jim Henson Creature Shop provided puppets for the segments where Alice (sometimes old, sometimes young) re-encounters her old acquaintances from Wonderland such as the Mad Hatter, March Hare, Dormouse, and crucially the Caterpillar (“You are old, Mrs. Hargreaves …”) They’re most certainly not the wacky, comic versions you’ll find in most other adaptations – think more Meet the Feebles than the Muppets. The Mad Hatter looks like he has a skin disease, the March Hare like his teeth are rotting. It’s another obstacle to us and Alice understanding the love that was behind all this.

It’s a miracle, then, how in the end (for me at least: I would hope though that the same is true for a least some in the first and second sets of viewers described earlier) it all works in favour of stuffy old Alice and creepy old Dodgson. The final scenes, again, have Coral Browne almost looking directly into our eyes, quizzically, as if to say, “What do you think?” as she finds herself experiencing her most important memory – the camera cuts by a 180 angle to show that she’s looking at Dodgson on a day when she and her sisters (and her husband to be, Reginald Hargreaves) humiliated him. We see the young Alice almost immediately regret her laughter and moving over to Dodgson, hugging him and kissing him on the cheek. It’s just love, that’s all, the movie seems to say. And quite ingeniously and beautifully it says it too.

“The me I never knew
Begin to stir sometime this morning;
The me I never knew
Appeared without a word of warning.”

I’d forgotten entirely how this version, too, replicates that “golden afternoon” feeling at the start so well, also that it begins in such a fashion in a framing device of “Mr. Dodgson” (Lewis Carroll) telling the three Liddell sisters the story. All bonus points in my book.

What I always remember about the movie are the songs, John Barry’s score, and Fiona Fullerton, who is absolutely beautiful in the central role – I don’t care what people say about her being too old for it, she’s young enough in spirit and appearance for me. The visual effects, it bears repeating from below, I still find absolutely stunning. The slow shrinking over “Curiouser and Curiouser”, ending with the trackback to reveal the pool of tears, is simply perfect, as is the later growing in the White Rabbit’s house.

It’s certainly still my favourite adaptation (so far). It also has the benefit (I think – as I’ve said in other Alice reviews today I only discovered this past week) of being one of the few to focus solely on the first book (hence the title, presumably).

September 8th, 2005:

This movie has a beautiful look to it, the kind they simply don’t do anymore, all foggy and mysterious like The Water Babies, not slick and perfect like today’s fantasy adventures. There’s some great music by John Barry (slightly dodgy lyrics by Don Black though) and an enchanting performance by then 16-year-old Fiona Fullerton as Alice. What’s most wonderful about the whole thing is its infectious innocence. The cast is packed with stars, from Peter Sellers to Spike Milligan and Michael Crawford, if you can recognise them under all the make-up. The effects are flawless, too. For a 90 minute movie, it tires towards the end, but overall it’s a fairly fantastic adaptation.

Of course, as the Disney version, this is the best-known, most-loved, most stylised and standardised of all the adaptations. As far as I know, it was likely my only source of the story for a good chunk of my life, and by that I mean, I don’t even remember reading or being read the book (_sniff_ lol): I only realised this past week reading the first of the books that parts of this and the other adaptations, like Tweedledum and Tweedledee for example, were in fact taken from “Through the Looking Glass” which I’ve yet to read. In this version, in fact, they even pull in a couple of elements from Carroll’s “Jabberwocky”, as well as throwing in some genuinely clever characters and lines of their own (“You gave me quite a turn!” “She’s stark raven mad!”) ... all in 70 minutes. I still prefer the Fiona Fullerton version by a smidgen, and who knows what Tim Burton’s going to deliver, but this is one of Disney’s best, it’s eyepoppingly colourful particularly when you consider the year it was made, and the character designs etc certainly stick in one’s memory.

This one is fascinating – another TV production, this time by the BBC for the “Wednesday Play” series, and boy does that show: the word “pretentious” certainly comes to mind but I for one won’t be using it because this is one of the best adaptations of the book that I’ve yet seen. It begins by perfectly recreating the part of the story that has always been the most strongly evocative part to me: the simple, lazy image of Alice and her sister on the bank on a hazy Summer afternoon (“All in a golden afternoon …”). From there it launches into some of the most surreal, dreamlike progressions I’ve ever seen on film. It captures some part of the book that few other adaptations would dare. Through clever editing, it’s the closest and most prolonged replica of the dream experience I’ve seen.

I wouldn’t have thought it, as I’m quite attached to the innocent and gracious image of Alice in the blue dress with blonde hair in a bow etc, but I quite like this Hermione-haired, black-dressed, aloof version as played by Anne-Marie Mallik, too; I love how she’s always walking away from people with a “hmph!” flick of her hair. The look she almost gives the camera as the caucus-race “winners” gather around uttering, “prizes, prizes, prizes”, quite like zombies droning, “brains”, lol, is quite priceless, it’s the look of a person bemused by the herd-like behaviours of society.

In short, what it lacks in colour, effects, costumes and comprehensiveness, it makes up for entirely with the feeling it gives by the extraordinary stillness, both in the image and in the soundtrack, Mallik’s whispery distant voiceover, and that very BBC “Play for Today” type score (excepting the odd moment when it, like the imagery, goes a little mental). At 70 minutes, there’s no excuse to pass up the chance to see it.

I love Tina Majorino in just about anything so I kind of knew that I’d be comfortable through most of this despite some bad comments about it (Martin Gardner calls it “undistinguished” and “boring” in “The Annotated Alice” and considering how great his insights are in the margins of that volume, I couldn’t well not believe him). With the book very fresh in my mind (I just finished reading it minutes before putting this on), I was pretty dazzled by how faithful it is to the text (to “Wonderland” at least; I can’t speak for the episodes towards the end I’m assuming are from “Through the Looking Glass”, which I’ve not yet read). That, however, turns out to perhaps be the production’s singular problem. There’s a fine line between being faithful and too damn literal, and this certainly crosses that line eventually.

As expected, I found Majorino delightful as Alice (I don’t like the yellow dress though :P) – her English accent is a little too clipped at times but mostly it’s perfect, as is she. The rest of the cast is certainly impressive (how often do you find Ken Dodd, Martin Short and Gene Wilder in the same place, lol?) but often just plain annoying; for me nothing much compares to the fantastic supporting cast of the Fiona Fullerton version. The visual effects are fairly clunky at times and the production and costume design etc (I already mentioned the yellow dress) is some of the most garish and unappealing I’ve seen in any artwork based on the story – towards the end, in fact, it almost looks like they’re running out of money by the scene. For Majorino and the details in the script, however, it’s certainly worth seeing if you’ve read and enjoyed the source material.

“It’s just life.”
“It’s just stupid.”

Hmm … I have to say, I was really looking forward to seeing this again having, I think, only seen it once before. But I can’t help but feel a little let down by it a second time around. Everything I said below still applies – even that it is a kind of favourite of mine that I will watch many times more – but it felt dreadfully bleak and uneventful this time around, like there should’ve been more. The ending feels rushed, and though Rob Brydon (as good shedding his usual image here as James Nesbitt was in Millions) and Stephanie Leonidas sell it perfectly … I don’t know, it just feels a little bare. It could just be me going overkill on the Alice theme, I guess. Like I said, I really love it, it’s visually stunning and everything – I love the “Close to You” scene – it’s just a little, I don’t know, creaky? Though for some, perhaps even me on the right day, perhaps that adds to its charm.

December 18th, 2005:

Fast reviews from now till the end of the year, apologies :-p

I said earlier in the year how I wanted to get to reading Neil Gaiman’s books having stumbled across his blog via regular RSS searches for Roger Avary and Poppy Z. Brite. This movie turns out to be a fantastic introduction to his work. Visually electrifying, with beautiful music and inspired casting, with a central performance by Stephanie Leonidas (aged 21 playing 15, lol) that will go down (for me at least) with Jennifer Connelly in Labyrinth and even Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz, both movies this brings to mind (as well as Paperhouse and the work of Hiyao Miyazaki), this is my new favourite movie of the year.

“You seem like such a nice beast. Well I certainly hope you are what you seem to be.”

I don’t know what it is about this movie. It’s undeniable how perfect an example of “bad” 80s moviemaking it is. It’s obviously comparable to “Alice in Wonderland” (you’ll notice a theme in the next few reviews, incidentally … it is a certain someone’s birthday this weekend, afterall …), not only in the “lost girl” theme but also in the rhymes and riddles she encounters along the way. It’s practically identical to “Wonderland” in fact – but for one detail, Sarah’s brother, the baby … the goal. The whole thing is set up like a video game. The wonder of wonderland, of course, was that Alice had no great reason to be there, it’s very much one thing after another (“Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”)

I guess the goal element comes from “The Wizard of Oz” – Jareth’s (has there ever been a sillier name for a villain? lol) castle as the Emerald City, you see the book (with a lot of other fairytales – not sure if Alice is there though) in Sarah’s room at the start – but it strikes me more as over-dependence on the Joseph Campbell mythology thing that started to dominate screenwriting around the time thanks to Syd Field and hand in hand with high concept and VHS produced hoards of horrors that still have my kneejerk thought on the Eighties as “the worst decade for cinema” even while movies like this always remind me it really wasn’t so bad.

In the end there’s just something mystical about it that defies explanation – if you know and love the movie, you just know what I’m talking about – it’s there when the opening credits music strikes up, in those shots of Jennifer Connolly running through the rain to “Underground”, at the strange diversion of the masked ball where she dresses older and dances with Bowie, and at the end with the upside-down staircases; ironically, somehow it just wouldn’t be the same without the tacky Eighties synth music and hairdos, lol. It makes you feel like a horrible wish like the one Sarah makes at the start – the kind we all half-heartedly make from time to time – really could be granted and turn our world on its head. It’s bizarre and silly and fun, but in the end it’s somehow a lesson that never gets old, perhaps because it never quite gets learned.