Gorgeous Overpriced Nonsense
It goes without saying that having Tim Burton adapt a version of Lewis Carroll’s ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ is a fantastic idea. I was very excited when I first heard about it. Even more so when the first pictures of it came out with Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter, Helena Bonham Carter as the Red Queen, and Anne Hathaway as the White Queen. Once I learned that he had managed to get a Jabberwock into the story (something that had not been done in any previous adaptation) my anticipation was truly piqued. Having said that the movie is sort of a let down. I say it is a let down because it completely betrays the tone, theme, and characters of Lewis Carroll. But only ‘sort of’ because Tim Burton outdoes himself with an incredibly detailed and fantastic vision of Wonderland.
It goes without saying that Tim Burton should never try any story that is completely original (in fact besides Frankenweenie I don’t think he ever has.) The guy is just terrible at narrative cohesion and character development. This is perhaps why his best movies are adaptations of already complete stories like Ed Wood and Sweeney Todd while some of his not very good movies are adaptations of shorter stories that he unsuccessfully tries to elaborate a larger story on like Sleepy Hollow or invent an entirely new plot for like Planet of the Apes. This movie is of the former category. The original books are very episodic in nature and don’t easily translate into a movie already (saying this Walt Disney did an awesome job doing just that in the 1951 film). But this isn’t a straight adaptation. It is a sequel that takes place after the original books in which an adult Alice tumbles down the rabbit hole in an attempt to escape an awkward marriage proposal. Once in Wonderland she is confronted with a White Rabbit, a pair of not quite human twins named Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, a Dodo, and a mouse. All of them can speak. They inform her that she is part of a prophecy that foretells the frabjous day when she will slay the Jabberwock. All of a sudden a bunch of armored red cards and a Bandersnatch rush out of the jungle and try to capture all of them. Apparently the Red Queen has been terrorizing the countryside for no particular reason. The White Queen can’t do anything about it because she’s like Ghandi. The Mad Hatter, well for his part, he’s completely insane. If you have trouble making sense of this then that’s probably because it doesn’t make any because like all nonsense it can’t.
The great thing about Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland (and the reason that it is one of my favorite books) is not its flights of fancy or imagination. It’s the brilliancy of its logic and wordplay. Here’s a pretty good example, which is not in the movie:
‘Take some more tea,’ the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
‘I’ve had nothing yet, ‘ Alice replied in an offended tone, ‘so I can’t take more.’
‘You mean you can’t take LESS,’ said the Hatter: ‘It’s very easy to take MORE than nothing.’
All good logical nonsense has three levels to it. The first is a flat statement of nonsense (Have more tea). The second is the reasoned response (I can’t take more). The third is the explanation of the earlier nonsense and the logical refutation of the reasoned response (take MORE than nothing). Carroll’s books are entirely full of this sort of thing. He is a brilliant wordsmith and probably impossible to have a normal conversation with. He has the ability to flip conversations onto their back and tickle them to death. The unifying theme in his book was always little Alice’s reaction to this nonsense. By nature she is an imaginative girl (Won’t read a book without pictures) who follows her curiosity without thinking (why not go down a rabbit hole? Curious and curiouser). But the new world she finds isn’t very kind to her. In fact, almost across the board everyone she meets is incredibly rude. Alice being good mannered tries to humor the odd creatures she meets but is bandied about with illogic and contemptuous behavior. The Red Queen tops them all by insisting on good manners while indecently shouting “Off With His Head!” at everyone. Finally Alice gets angry herself and ultimately rejects the nonsense and the dream (Who cares for you? You’re just a pack of cards!) This is not the embrace of imagination. It is quite the opposite. Alice’s arc is one of greater maturation. She is shedding childish silly things. It is fitting that Carroll was the tutor of the real Alice. The story is a perfect revenge of a schoolteacher. Take the uninterested daydreaming pupil and insert her into a world filled with even more childish, inattentive, rebellious, and ADD prone creatures. See how she likes it.
At least that’s what I got out of it. Tim Burton gets the exact opposite. In his movie, all the characters were apparently friends of Alice when she was there the first time. What’s more Alice never objects to the silly things that go on around her in this world. In fact, the whole moral of the story is to exalt your imagination. Alice needs to embrace her muchness and think impossible thoughts. This is okay a moral as any but it really hurts Carroll’s much strived for logical nonsense. Without the reasonable objections the movie never gets past the first level of simple stated nonsense. The effect of this is a movie completely deprived of laughs and any logical explanation of the silliness. At one point Johnny Depp recites the first stanza of Carroll’s famous poem ‘Jabberwocky.’ It goes something like this:
Twas brillig and the slithy toves
did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
and the momewraths outgrabe.
Now since Alice doesn’t object or ask him what the hell he’s talking about, this stanza is never explained. If you haven’t read the book I feel sorry for you. I only truly appreciated it in the book after Humpty Dumpty explained all the portmanteaus contained within it. That stanza makes sense take my word for it.
So the story doesn’t make any sense, isn’t funny, and completely misinterprets the original masterpiece, why then am I giving it four stars. Well, because the movie is goddamn gorgeous that’s why. Say what you want about Burton’s storytelling skills but he is a consummate visual artist. Every setting, set decoration, and character in the movie has been lovingly crafted into his unique visionary style. Anne Hathaway as the White Queen is angelic. Mia Wasikowska, as Alice, looks fantastic in her suit of armor. Helena Bonham Carter and Crispin Glover make great rotten hearts. Johnny Depp looked…interesting? The White and Red Armies of chess pieces/cards are sights to behold. And the Jabberwock was everything I hoped it could be and more. None of the actors give very good performances because of the complete lack of motivation the characters have for anything they do, but hey they look great doing it. For the love of God, will somebody get Tim Burton a good screenwriter!
I must complain about one more thing, and that is the 3D ticket price and the vast hypocrisy that is behind. The ticket cost is now $16.50, four dollars more than the very high normal ticket price of $12.50. The extra four dollars are there to pay for the glasses. The theater will not let you bring in previously purchased glasses. You must buy them new every single time. At the end of the showing the theater has the audacity to ask us to “Go Green” and recycle the glasses, presumably so they can sell them once again for $4 to another unwitting customer. If the theater really cared a wit about the environment they would allow us to reuse the glasses ourselves. Then they wouldn’t have to make so many unnecessary copies of them. Go Green? Bullshit I say! Shame, movie industry, Shame!
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