Through A Broken Looking Glass

Since  about mid-2008, I was very well aware “Alice in Wonderland,” the newest adaptation only three weeks old, was going to be made. When I read Tim Burton was to sit in the directors chair, I nearly lost it. To me, Burton is arguably the defining visual artist of the movie medium currently working today. He has no peers. Burton’s a filmmaker whose resume you could put up on a slideshow and be able to indentify his work based on a single still photograph. That neo-gothic stamp is iconic. It’s something of a miracle it’s taken the auteur twenty-five years and fourteen films to burrow down the rabbit hole, but he’s been doing variations of that for an entire career. In theory, “Alice” is tailor-made for every quirky and gloomy sensibility Burton has in his limitless imagination.

Having seen the film at last, it’s clear Lewis Carrol’s story still is, kind of.

The movie actually is the closest thing to a disaster Burton’s done since his 2001 version of ”Planet of the Apes.”  Well, “Apes” was a disaster, “Alice” is a misfire. I’m cautious to call this a review, since I’m not really sticking to the conventions of what a movie review has to involve, but more of a discussion.

As I think over the film more and more, the angrier I get. On one hand, it’s nearly impossible to screw the story up. Alice falls down hole. Alice meets weirdos. Alice learns adult lessons from said weirdos without actually realizing it. Alice leaves. Yet Carrol’s  ”Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” it’s taken me this long to realize, is only memorable for how unmemorable it is. Really, those clinically insane characters ARE “Alice in Wonderland.” There isn’t a story. Her entire journey is nonsense. In the  1951 Disney cartoon, a properly hallucinagenic experience, the little girl meets the smoking caterpillar, the Mad Hatter, the Queen of Hearts and the Chesire Cat, all anectdotes in a series of strange sequences. Like this newest version, she doesn’t quite know what to make of what she sees. And how could she? Everything around her is politically incorrect.

While Burton’s Alice, a blossoming, perceptive 19-year-old going on 30, knows exactly how ridiculous Wonderland is, therefore becoming unphased by it, the cartoon Alice has no idea, leading to innocent confusion. Both reactions don’t inherently work for compelling narrative. Our hero is either turned off  by this deceptively inviting place or finds the wonder going right over her head. Burton wisely has chosen a script where no sense is made of the nonsense. He’s trying something new, fleshing out and stretching thin Carrol’s sequel to Alice’s first adventure, “Through the Looking Glass,” and the Jabberwocky poem inside. On paper the idea is novel. We don’t need to see the classic done for the 21st time. But man, where’s the story, here?

There isn’t a single memorable character in “Alice in Wonderland,” which is amazing because it’s exactly the characters that make the story worthwhile. I am reminded of the evaporating Chesire Cat, a really fantastic image. Like the feline, everyone in Burton’s film slowly fades out of memory. Nobody is given any exposition. There are so many things happening at once, the plot never takes the time to stop and revel in what made these many creations so special. Burton does manange to do this once, in the film’s best and brilliant sequence, The Mad Hatter’s tea party. It’s perfectly executed. Everything from the performances, the costumes and set dressing is the exact spirit of Carroll. But right as we’ve settled in, the plot intrudes.

I’m so madly torn by “Alice in Wonderland.” It has a story, yet doesn’t really at the same time. It’s a story thin enough to give you a paper cut. I had the hardest time caring about any of it. Yet in a way, I can’t for the life of me think of an alternative, and most importantly, definitive take on this material. Sometimes, the seeminly easy stuff is by far the most impossible to adapt. The imagery of Wonderland is positively clamoring to be put up on the silver screen, but its all for nothing if there isn’t some sort of draw. I wanted to explore Wonderland, not leave it. It’s really saying something when the opening real world sequences are far more exciting than the tripiness of Wonderland.

Tim Burton really isn’t to blame because he tried his best with what he had. This is a script problem. Scenes end abruptly and the flow of movie is preposterous. Even Johnny Depp (my ultimate muse) as the Hatter is unfocused. The performance has no centrality to it. Instead of being one note of mad (which he should be), he’s about five. From the introduction of new and pointless characters to the very little time spent with old ones, this is a movie totally lacking in joy, spirit and, yeah, wonder. It’s a collection of moments with only a a few wonderfully zany ones. This isn’t a movie of “Alice in Wonderland,” but a skit of “Alice in Wonderland.”

When Alice gets to Wonderland, what next? It’s a tricky question. What, really, is the point? I think the consensus is there shouldn’t be a point. Welcome the insanity instead of caging it. Tim Burton, of all people, is trying to cage it. He’s trying to give purpose to  a dream. When we awaken from a dream, there are moments we remember and little bits that are lost. Even if none of it is comphrensible, it was still an adventure and, oddly enough, reasonable within the context of fantasy. It’s the beauty of the human mind.