ALICE IN WONDERLAND (2010)

 Tim Burton’s take on Carroll—which I’ll call WONDERLAND for short-- dispenses with the notion that Wonderland is a dreamscape.  The film, released by contemporary Disney but with none of the old Disney "brand" about it, begins with Alice as a young lady whose mother attempts to make her marry a rich but repulsive suitor.  In her heart Alice knows that she shouldn’t have to bow to the conventions of the real world, because as a child she visited the unconventional cosmos of Wonderland—though during her inevitable second visit, she learns that her child-self got the name wrong; that it’s actually called “Underland.”  Though Underland’s only intrusion into Alice’s real world is the White Rabbit, the script strongly implies that the other world maintains its own existence, for between Alice’s two visits the wacky inhabitants of Underland undergo a political victimization more in line with STAR WARS than with Carroll's satirircal japery.

Even though the script insists that the world’s proper name is not Wonderland, the CGI effects go all-out to emphasize the wondrous beauty of the terrain the teenaged Alice explores.  However, much as in STAR WARS and the NARNIA films, this Alice finds she’s been called to a new world not to simply wander about but to fulfill a heroic destiny.  The reluctant heroine not only learns that the quirky inhabitants of Underland are enslaved by the Red Queen (Helena Bonham Carter in CGI-altered form), but that a prophecy asserts that Alice will be their liberator. More specifically, Alice—a young woman who has no martial training whatever—is expected to slay the dragon-like Jabberwocky, as a prelude to destroying the Red Queen’s power.

Obviously this is about as far from satire as one can get, even further than Disney’s looney slapstick comedy.  Nevertheless, Burton’s WONDERLAND is enjoyable enough on its own terms, and even if the characters aren’t as dark as the Carroll originals, they are (in line with most of Burton’s other films) much quirkier than Disney’s flat comic types.  The CGI versions of Tweedledum and Tweedledee, though depicted as sympathetic figures, carry a creepy Charles Addams vibe, as does Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter.

  The Hatter, despite his madness, is something of a secondary heroic figure in WONDERLAND: like Obi-Wan in STAR WARS, he pushes Alice to be the hero that his world needs.  Alice finally girds her loins (so to speak) and has a vivid sword-battle with the Jabberwock, insuring the defeat of the Red Queen (who might be viewed here as symbolically identical with Alice’s tyrannical mother).  As a result of facing her destiny in Underland—which is to say, the “underworld” of her own psyche-- Alice returns to the real world, rejects its insistence of conformity, and successfully chooses her own path in proto-feminist fashion.

Though neither film has much in common with the themes of the Alice books, the Burton film does at least feel like the work of an artist providing his very different take on another artist’s themes.  Derivative though Burton’s film may be, it has a less cobbled-together feeling than the Disney adaptation, and for that reason is more aesthetically successful overall.