Sorry to keep posting stuff about the movie, but I was really excited about it and am very happy it finally came out!!
There is an album of music inspired by the film called Almost Alice. I was listening to it on iTunes the other day, and Franz Ferdinand did a musical rendition of "The Lobster Quadrille" how cool is that?! It's pretty gloomy yet catchy, and I think it captures the poem rather well!
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Alice goes to China
I remain completely shocked by the ending event of Tim Burton's new film, "Alice in Wonderland." While I enjoyed overall Burton's interpretation/amalgamation of Lewis Carroll's two tales, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_ and _Through the Looking Glass_, I was completely thrown by the following three elements:
1. Alice goes to China at the film's close. She essentially becomes the ultimate imperialist, realizing how she can extend the imperial commerce plans of her now-deceased father beyond even his own mad fancies. Thus, Alice is made to grow up (again), not into the proper, subdued, domestic woman, but a "new woman" who inherits the colonizer's mantle. I'm not sure which is better or worse. Or if, in fact, Alice is a doomed character, whose trips down the rabbit hole will be a life long process of growing up again and again. After all, while down the rabbit hole, she must grow up, grow down, grow up, grow down, and grow up again, depending on which substance she ingests at any particular time. Consequently, "growing up" is a mere illusion?
2. Why is the "Mad Hatter" (played wonderfully by Johnny Depp) a cross b/w an imbecile and a Scot? I couldn't figure out the Scottish allusion. Carroll himself had Irish roots. Does Burton have Scottish roots? Is there some jab at the Scots I should be aware of? (I just don't get it.)
3. Why was Alice Liddell changed to Alice Kingsley? I assumed we were talking about Henry Kingsley as the allusion--i.e. the brother of Charles Kingsley, who wrote the contemporary novel, _The Water-babies_. But just prior to the closing scene of the film, we find out that Alice's father's name was CHARLES Kingsley. Is this Burton conflating Henry Kingsley w/ Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), or is Burton perhaps implying he's planning to make _The Water-babies_ into a similarly delightful film? Or, was it just an unintended consequence, one that only a reader of Victorian lit would construct?
Oh. and I do have a 4th element that threw me: the 3D showing of the film. Bleck! Aside from the random flecks of dust, mingling and floating in the sunbeams, I found the 3D distracting and headache inducing. In fact, this technique served to reinforce the fact that I was watching a movie, rather than allowing me to truly get lost in it. There is something to be said, after all, for the strength of the imagination over technology.
1. Alice goes to China at the film's close. She essentially becomes the ultimate imperialist, realizing how she can extend the imperial commerce plans of her now-deceased father beyond even his own mad fancies. Thus, Alice is made to grow up (again), not into the proper, subdued, domestic woman, but a "new woman" who inherits the colonizer's mantle. I'm not sure which is better or worse. Or if, in fact, Alice is a doomed character, whose trips down the rabbit hole will be a life long process of growing up again and again. After all, while down the rabbit hole, she must grow up, grow down, grow up, grow down, and grow up again, depending on which substance she ingests at any particular time. Consequently, "growing up" is a mere illusion?
2. Why is the "Mad Hatter" (played wonderfully by Johnny Depp) a cross b/w an imbecile and a Scot? I couldn't figure out the Scottish allusion. Carroll himself had Irish roots. Does Burton have Scottish roots? Is there some jab at the Scots I should be aware of? (I just don't get it.)
3. Why was Alice Liddell changed to Alice Kingsley? I assumed we were talking about Henry Kingsley as the allusion--i.e. the brother of Charles Kingsley, who wrote the contemporary novel, _The Water-babies_. But just prior to the closing scene of the film, we find out that Alice's father's name was CHARLES Kingsley. Is this Burton conflating Henry Kingsley w/ Charles Dodgson (aka Lewis Carroll), or is Burton perhaps implying he's planning to make _The Water-babies_ into a similarly delightful film? Or, was it just an unintended consequence, one that only a reader of Victorian lit would construct?
Oh. and I do have a 4th element that threw me: the 3D showing of the film. Bleck! Aside from the random flecks of dust, mingling and floating in the sunbeams, I found the 3D distracting and headache inducing. In fact, this technique served to reinforce the fact that I was watching a movie, rather than allowing me to truly get lost in it. There is something to be said, after all, for the strength of the imagination over technology.
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