Alice

Wow, an 'Eraserhead' for children. This film has some of the most gorgeous imagery in an animated film that I've seen. I don't remember too much of "Alice in the Wonderland" from the Disney version that I've seen a couple years ago, but I've got a hunch it didn't involve a girl crawling through a drawer after a rabbit with clicking gopher teeth and a limited diet of sawdust that he has a problem containing in his body, only for her to be left in a room that she fills with her own tears while a small rat has a cookout on her head. "Alice" is a re-telling of the popular children's tale, but it's a vivid and imaginative version that has the ability to disturb to the very same effect of the David Lynch film. The stop-motion animation enhances the creepiness of the film where familiar characters are given a Gothic and dark makeover. The story takes place in an old fashioned setting; the walls faded with age and abandonment. I loved the setting of this odd little tale and its very morbid idea of a "wonderland" and its characters including a frog with a very realistic tongue, a "catapiller" that we wouldn't normally think of such, and a moving wad of meat. The resulting film is a stunning achievement. My only somewhat minor qualm, the narration of the main character Alice's lips popping up repetitively throughout the film really started to get grating in the first couple of minutes. However, completely random and unpredictable, "Alice" moves at a somewhat slow pace but develops a level of coherency in the midst of all its strange happenings. The sounds, all though a bit loud, give so much life to the smallest objects. The film effectively evokes the emotions of the human psych that a surrealist film should aim for. And, in the context of a celebrated children's story, it elevates its effect with jarring imagery and sound that make it memorable and an important film in the history of animated film.

The Alice books are one of the two richest works of literature yet produced. Of the best literature, Alice lends itself to cinematic reinterpretation. And this filmmaker has vision.

But Alice is a coherent work, following the 'apprentice' novel and having kabbalistic structure. This film is episodic, each episode conceived as a different world, connected only by doors. The stories establish an abstract world, a world of logic so pure that the weaknesses of logic are apparent. That's only in part attempted here.

Though in Czech, there is some dainty wordplay: Alice is messing about in her drawers. Initially, these contain drawing equipment, later scissors. The filmmakers' signature 'large person in small room' image is used here in the episode where 'Maryanne' (Alice plus her 'house) is attempted entry by Bill the lizard, Dodgson's image of sperm. Bill is mirrored later in the frog-footman, heavily phallic as is an introduced sequence where the feet themselves become penile, then advisory.

Svenkmajer understands the cards as Tarot, a seldom understood insight and adds a vignette of the March Hare and Hatter playing cards (almost certainly a nod to 'Seventh Seal'). There's some very good visual handling of inside/outside ambiguities, and stage/reality shifting -- this alone makes this project worth sharing. But aside from that, it seems that the magic of Alice's world has yet to be tapped by a filmmaker.

Note: in Carroll's vision, innocence trumps all: logic is seen as manmade and fallible. In this world confabulated reasoning threatens but no one really loses their head. Not so in Svenkmajer's bleak world. Heads really are lost. Innocence is at least dumbfounded and possibly unreal (those socks). Many heads are already decayed with only the skull remaining. Some beings are composed of empty skulls alone or with some ambulatory object. This is not a happy man, nor a world with any sunshine. I would not give these images to any child.

A mix of live action and stop-action, this arthouse flick is intriguing but bizarre. But if I was a little kid I'd be scared out of my wits by The White Rabbit with bulging glass eyeballs & long, hamster-like fangs. Socks become wood-eating worms, Alice starts eating marmalade full of tacks, a tiny mouse lands on her head, punctures it & starts a fire, the rabbit hole she falls down starts as a desk drawer that grabs her & draws her in. The Alice doll she becomes when she's shrunk is sweet but sad. I have to admit it's fascinating and 180 degrees from the saccharine sweetness of the Disney film. See it on video to experience something completely different, and probably more towards the way Lewis Carroll intended the story to be...

Watched this last night - one of my favorites, especially as and ex-art student. He animated everything from socks to lumps of meat. Very dark, and would have been darker yet without the little girls voice over. My favorite scene, I think, is when the water rat sets up camp on her head. There is a lot to watch out for in this film, a hundred little touches, and references. Follows the book to a certain extent, but goes its own lunatic-asylum way. If you have very vivid dreams and wake up in the morning wondering 'what the heck was that all about?', it is a bit like watching this film:)

About five years ago, when I had just graduated from high school, a friend of mine who had been to college introduced me to the works of Jan Svankmajer. He had checked out a VHS copy of three short films, Darkness/Light/Darkness, Male Games, and The Death of Stalinism in Bohemia. All three of them were works of great genius, and I immediately stored Svankmajer's name in my vault. So it's sad that it took me all five of these years to see another one of his works. I had thought about buying his Faust back when DVDs were dirt-cheap (do you remember those happy days?), but had passed over it for something else. Now I finally found another one of his films, Alice, this one a feature, his adaptation of Lewis Carrol's Alice's Adventures of Wonderland. And, wow, this is one frightening little film, a mix of live-action (well, one little girl) and stop-motion animation of characters like the White Rabbit, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen of Hearts. Stop-motion animation has always looked creepy, and Sankmajer knows it. He also knows that dead animals are scary, and he incorporates their bones into his animation. It makes the whole film more visceral and surreal.

There are two parts of this film that deserve particular attention. 1) the soundtrack. There is no musical score, and the only music at all is the tiny piece that plays over the closing credits. No, by soundtrack I am referring to the sound effects, and they are absolutely amazing. 2) the setting.The original novel and the Disney film set the story in a bizarre forest. Sankmajer sets the story in a delapidated house, with rotting and filthy wooden beams everywhere, creaky doors, and old cabinets. The setting is what makes the film particularly creepy.

As for standout scenes, the caterpillar is pretty awesome. The very best scene, though, is definitely the tea party, with the Mad Hatter and March Hare. Svankmajer's conception of those two characters and of the tea party is truly inspired, and ranks among the best scenes in cinema, in my opinion.

So is it perfect? No. The idea to have Alice speak all the lines, and then show her lips speaking such words as: "The Mad Hatter said" every two minutes grows annoying quickly, and the film would perhaps have been a masterpiece had this flaw been avoided. It seems to be in there for adding time, and it's truly unfortunate. I also wish that Svankmajer would have hurried up the beginning of the film, so as to get to other great scenes in the novel. It takes a half hour before Alice gets into Wonderland, and that's the only time the film grows boring. Whatever. This is still a great film. 9/10.