Dream Child: De l'autre côté du miroir

The fate of movies is a mystery.

Why should it be that certain mediocre films draw crowds large enough to wrap twice around the block, only to be just as soon forgotten, while others, marvelous films, never catch on at all, and end up lost through decades, waiting only to be rediscovered one day, when a DVD edition suddenly blesses them with a second life?

DreamChild is a monumental work of art that rests on another monumental work. Of course, it helps that as a kid, I was fascinated by Lewis Carrol's famous adventures of Alice in Wonderland and Thru the Looking Glass, as well as the wild and often creepy, psychedelic universe beautifully rendered by artist Sir John Tenniel. It's worth noting that, to this day, we owe Tenniel most of the representations we have of the worlds and characters described by Carrol.

DreamChild a beautiful film in so many respects. Deeply moving and inviting us, the viewer, to reflect upon the true forces that guide the murky, and sometimes tortuous process from which art is born.

The screenplay by Dennis Potter is airtight, witty, often funny, but also dark and complex. Ian Holm as the Reverend Dodgson delivers one of the two best performances of his life (The Sweet Hereafter being the other). Curiously, both deal with the agonizing pain of holding back.

Even little Amelia Shankley, who plays young Alice Lydell, the muse throughout the film, is deeply haunting and complex, juggling the tricky emotions that carry the entire picture through to its resolution.

This was a fairly low budget production, shot entirely in the UK, but Roger Hall's masterful art direction can convince even a savvy movie buff that he is watching a pricey period picture set in New York City's Great Depression era. Gavin Millar, the director, is mature enough to let his camera witness a powerful story without artifice.

There is not one bad choice in this picture, right down to a gorgeous musical score by Stanley Myers. Finally, Jim Henson and his team of artists recreated the wildest and most beloved characters of Alice in Wonderland as animatronic puppets which, thirty years on, hold up perfectly and allow the film to soar with its unique, organic, and at times theatrical charm.

I saw this picture in New York City, in 1986, when it received a limited release, and I recall being instantly enchanted by it. I had to accept a poor videotape copy for years and years, until one of the film's crew members in the UK was kind enough to obtain a better copy for me, which I have cherished. But now, a DVD-R has been released in the film's original 1:85/1 ratio and I was recently able to watch it all again, at last in a perfect presentation.

DreamChild is a great big film which only had a small life, but it is worth discovering on DVD. It's a picture that could well stay with you for the rest of your life.

It did with me.

Let me start by simply saying that the reaction I had viewing this film was unlike any other viewing experience I can recall. Although I found it well written and produced, I was so disappointed by the 2/3's point that I almost stopped watching. Yet by the end I was absolutely embracing the whole thing. So if you are a Lewis Carroll fan keep an open mind and watch the whole thing, you may find the whole much greater than the sum of its parts. And you may even find yourself willing to accept the historical fiction as necessary to better tell the story.

I suppose a large part of my initial negative reaction was due to the film's puzzling failure to capture a fundamental aspect of Alice Liddell's childhood personality. Alice spent much of her time in "Wonderland" being p….d off; at the illogic, the rudeness, and the selfishness of the characters she met there. Both Alice's were proper and confident little Victorian girls who took themselves very seriously. I am sure that this was one of many "Real Alice" personality traits that Carroll transplanted to his "Wonderland" Alice. Often amused by her reactions of irritation and frustration, he constructed many of the story elements with the intention of getting indigent reactions from Alice and her sisters. I had hoped that this connection would be made by the film and was disappointed that it was not explored, although in retrospect you could argue that the older Alice's reactions to the characters she meets in America are identical to Alice's reactions to the characters in Wonderland. That the film does not explore my pet topic was disappointing but ultimately not fatal.

In all other respects the portrayal of young Alice Liddell was excellent. Amelia Shankley turned in a fine performance. She is clearly the best film Alice so far and it is a shame that they did not star her in an actual Alice film right after "Dreamchild" was completed. And Coral Browne was equally excellent as the older Alice.

This film is about how Alice's mother (who felt her daughter could find much better candidates for marriage as she moved into her teens) essentially poisoned her memories of Dodgson, leading her to believe that there was something wrong about his feelings for her (when in fact he was just a childlike personality who loved her more than his other child friends, but always with a shy innocence). It is also about the guilt the older Alice still feels over abandoning him just as she entered her teens, especially after all the innocent kindness he had shown. She is in denial about her affection for Dodgson and irritated because all the attention of his centennial is forcing her to recall those long-suppressed years of her life. And finally she feels that since she was not actually the little heroine who exhibited so much courage in "Wonderland", she does not deserve her sudden celebrity status. In her view she was catapulted into fame "by simply doing nothing". Remember that Wonderland Alice is arguably the bravest literary heroine of all time.

What ultimately redeems the film is the climatic scene in the hall of Columbia University. Alice Liddell flashes back to a scene late in her relationship with Dodgson, a symbolic scene meant to represent the end of their relationship. She had outgrown him at this point in her life and she laughs and humiliates him as he attempts to sing his Lobster Quadrille song to the three Liddell sisters and their male suitors. When her mind returns to the present she hears the Columbia University orchestra and glee club performing the same song. She realizes that the story which she once rejected was in fact his personal tribute to her and that even after all these years each little detail of his creation is admired throughout the world. At this point she finally gets it. She goes back to the symbolic scene as her older sister Lorina reads the final paragraph from the Wonderland book, the one in which Dodgson reveals the reason he made up the story. Then the child Alice walks over, kisses Dodgson in apology, and places her head on his chest (an omission for which she has long felt guilty). Then we are back in the hall and find that in place of her prepared speech she has read this same passage to the now applauding crowd.

The point is that she finally understood that the story was a gift to her and to future generations of children, that she had inspired the story and had been the model for his heroine. With this realization came the final gift of knowing that the virtues Mr. Dodgson gave his heroine: innocence, courage, curiosity, wonder, kindness, intelligence, courtesy, humor, dignity, and a sense of justice; were virtues he credited to the real Alice.

It is hard to imagine a better scene (or sequence of scenes) than the climatic one detailed above. Film and video cannot hope to compete with books in communicating thoughts. But with the right players film can visually communicate moments of character realization and transformation to a degree much more subtle and personal than what any author can write. This is the real magic of film and acting for the camera. In the end these climatic moments say everything that needs be said about the relationship between Dodgson and his "dreamchild". A truly great cinematic moment and my all-time favorite.

I don't put much stock in the central conceit shared in "Dreamchild" that Charles Dodgson was a pedophile in love with Alice Liddell, the real-life inspiration for his Alice books. Regardless, this theory serves the film well--better than it did in Dennis Potter's prior TV "Alice" (1965). It's one of the more disturbing adaptations or reworkings of the famous children's books, and that includes the grotesque puppetry from Jim Henson's Creature Shop, which otherwise is best known for kiddie fare such as The Muppets franchise. "Dreamchild" is also one of the more interesting cinematic translations to incorporate the historical background into the telling of parts from the books. Others have tended to limit this to a framing narrative, as in the 1949 and 1972 versions. The "reality" and fantasy in "Dreamchild," however, are comparatively well integrated.

The main narrative has Alice Liddell, now the nearly-80-years-old and widowed Mrs. Hargreaves, traveling to New York to receive an honorary degree to mark the centenary of Lewis Carroll's birth. While in the states, she's hounded by the press (the gaggle of fast-talking, cynical Depression-era reporters being an imitation straight out of "The Front Page") and forced to recall her childhood encounters with Mr. Dodgson and selections from the book he wrote for her. Underlying the dreams from book is a competent interpretation of "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland." Beyond the amusing nonsense, the fictional Alice's physical transformations--alternately growing bigger and smaller--is translated as an allegory for aging, with the movie's Alice changing between her as a child and as an old woman in her interactions with Wonderland's inhabitants. These characters remain partially nasty or threatening to Alice, as per the literary source, which likewise is read as representing one's (originally, a child's) struggle to make sense of the adult world, or, in this case, also the Depression-era modernity of the New World and Alice's reckoning with her past relationship with the author.

All of this is reflected in two plotlines involving older men and their advances towards younger females. In the modern timeline, one of the reporters begins a romantic relationship with Alice's travel companion, Lucy, and, in the past, there's Dodgson's questionable intentions towards young Alice. "Dreamchild" largely reduces the author of the greatest books in the history of children's literature to a stuttering girl lover who seems to repress his sexual desires with photography and telling her stories, disregarding much of his other influences and importance of his work, but it's a more sophisticated interpretation of the Alice books than most other movies I've sought out since reading Carroll's stories, and it's certainly one of the more unsettling and mature reimaginings.

In order to fully appreciate this movie a knowledge of both Alice Liddell and Lewis Carroll is recommended. For a film associared with Dennis Potter--who'd previously written an Alice in the 60s...you might expect smut but there's none here. Its all done very tastefully so it would disappoint anyone looking for titillation. Jane Asher has a minor role as Mrs.Liddell,shown as a chaperone on the famous river outing.She played Alice herself in the early 60s for a couple of studio casts. Though its artistic license to suggest Mrs.Hargreaves took along her maid in reality there were two others,one of which was her granddaughter. I liked the scene where Mrs.Hargeaves read out a commercial---for which they'd pay her 1000s of dollars: ""once when I was a little girl I fell down a rabbit hole then picked up a bottle with a label on which said DRINK ME.But today I look for a bottle which says CHARDONAY"

"Dreamchild" is a dark yet beautiful tale of an elderly woman haunted by the famous author who adored her as a child. It deals with love and fear, memories and the past, and the final recociliation of the two. Each character is succinctly and sympathetically drawn, from Lucy the young and naieve maid of the elderly Victorian Mrs. Alice Hargreaves (nee Liddell), who, on her first visit to America, cannot understand the intense attention given to her because of her connection to Lewis Carroll/Rev. Dodgson. The movie seamlessly shifts from the present (New York during the Despression) to the past (Victorian England at Oxford University). Real fans of Alice in Wonderland may object to this depiction of Wonderland characters in a harsher, angrier light; such as when the 80 year old Mrs. Hargreaves meets the Mad Hatter. The Reverend Dodgson does not stand accused as Michael Jackson or like some members of the clergy today, but Mrs. Hargreaves does ask "My mother destroyed all his letters. Why would she do that?" But the younger Alice, when asked by her mother, "Why on earth would he say that to you?" answers straighforwardly, "Because he loves me, of course." A thought provoking film worth seeing if you can find it.