Wonderland

'Wonderland' is a story about ordinary people told in an extraordinarily beautiful way.

The visual style of the film draws you close--you're not watching a movie, but you are an observer, an eavesdropper on the lives of a South London family and their friends. It's almost as if you saw someone on the bus, and then were able to follow them to their home and around where they work, unseen, for a few days. You believe these people exist, in reality--you _recognize_ these characters because you've seen them before.

There's an incredible musical score by Michael Nyman. It supports and builds the drama of the story, and illuminates the inner struggles of the characters.

It's a beautiful movie. Fans of Wong Kar-Wai's ChungKing Express will enjoy this.

I saw this movie at a Saturday midnight showing in Barcelona, with Spanish subtitles. You could feel the emotion run through the audience. Everyone stayed for the credits.

"Wonderland" is a well-articulated drama about working people in London going through the emotional chaos of everyday life. What makes it special is that it shows a family with little or no parental support struggling to hold together by the fortitude of its siblings. It is a special film in two other ways: characters act out their roles within unstaged, real world settings and, at the same time, the characters are shown, mostly in isolation, responding to these same settings. By doing so, the film highlights even more the chaotic, transitory, and even aimless behaviors of urban life. We see the mother, Eileen (Kika Markham) relieving her frustrations by playing in an actual bingo hall, the estranged father, Tim (Stuart Townsend) taking his son Jack (Peter Marfleet) to a wildly contested soccer match, an emotionally wounded woman, Nadia (Gina McKee) riding a double-decker bus filled with revelers, and the piece-de-resistance of one of the pregnant characters, Molly (Molly Parker) giving live birth. The film even uses fast forwarding frames in two scenes, one involving Nadia and her lonely-hearts club failures and the other when the dishonest husband James cannot return home to his wife, to illustrate their out of control, misdirected lives. Another treat of this film is that we don't initially know the identity of the characters and their connection to each other until the film slowly unfolds bits and pieces of their story. While that might tax the patience of some people, I became much more alert to the story. What was annoying was the overemphasis on the background nightlife of London and the heavy dramatic score, a score that seemed to tip off in at least two places that the film was prematurely ending. Overall, "Wonderland" is a well-acted, worthwhile film because it successfully portrays real-life situations involving real-life struggles in a unusually candid and poignant way.

This may be the best film of 2000 (at least that's when it was released in Australia).

Whilst film-makers like P.T. Anderson have made admirable attempts at personal drama in the last few years, and Mike Leigh continues to tell us that no-one suffers like the poor (as if we didn't know that), Michael Winterbottom has re-defined the genres. This is English kitchen sink drama without the tired clichés of class wars, which have seemed a bit anachronistic since the fall of the Tories.

Shot in a stunning cinemascope (1:2.35) and available light, with the tiniest of crews, this is London as you've only seen it if you've seen it for yourself.

The cast shines. I defy anyone to make it through this film without falling in love with Gina McKee. That's not to say that Shirley Henderson and Molly Parker are anything less than charming. Ian Hart and Stuart Townsend are wonderful. Keep an eye out for the beautifully natural performance of David Fahm as Franklyn. Jack Shepherd, Kika Markham and John Simm round out the main cast with equally powerful performances.

A great script from first time screen-writer Lawrence Coriat. Michael Nyman turns out his most subtle and restrained music score yet. Michael Winterbottom is turning out to be the Stanley Kubrick of the 21st century. Who else has been able to jump from one genre to another with such ease and grace?

This is a compelling film, well worth having your own copy of.

Although not classified as a film for TV, `Wonderland' is very much in the style of a production for that media, and indeed might even be classified as `soap-opera'.

But forget anything and everything you have seen of that type of film: `Wonderland' is totally in another sphere, with a well-constructed story of a long-weekend, magnificently natural performances and excellent dialogues. One constantly thinks of the theatre playhouse element as the actors carry forward this sociological document, excellently choreographed by Michael Nyman´s music.

Here indeed is a richly rewarding 100-odd minutes of your time. The characters are immediate and thus so real that you cannot but fail to be swept into the story. Intertwining levels from the elderly couple, down through their daughters to the young grandson, all lends palpable reality to the price of living in the backdrops of a teeming faceless city.

Set over the weekend on which the ever faithful and conservative British continue celebrating `Guy Fawkes Night' commemorating the attempted blowing up of the Houses of Parliament by said Guido Fawkes a few centuries ago, the film cleverly brings together ordinary Londoners at a particular moment which undoubtedly is crucial to each of them. The cast is splendid; the performances are exactly right, natural, and thus so realistic; there is no forced over-the-top stuff here. Whereas I can easily sympathise with the symptomatic causes underlying the nonentity of suburban life in gigantic cities, and therefore can easily feel for these people in Winterbottom's very welcome offering in this film, I can so easily again see why, when barely twenty, I took to my heels and left London for other pastures.

Thanks for reminding me, Mr. Winterbottom. But thanks also for a fascinating insight into fine character-making in a very enjoyable film.

This film hit home and touched me so deeply on a personal level, its not even funny. And I believe it should have a fairly wide appeal, as well. The main limiting factor is that it may only be fully appreciated by Britons and anglophiles. There are so many specifics of daily working class London life, and the accents are slightly thick, that non-Britons may not be able to connect.

I read a review of this film in the Village Voice (it was very positive, and I rented the title on the strength of the recommendation) and one of the things it said was that this film didn't avert its eyes from the ugly things in life. And that is exactly what give this film is weight and poignancy.

This film even manages to capture one of the most difficult (and therefore least often seen, in films) aspects of modern working class life: the mind numbing crassness, tedium and insignificance. And at the same time, it manages to give dignity to these people's lives and gives them hope for finding threads of meaning in the garbage heap of modern life. The thought that came most forcefully to me at the end of this film was: how many years of suffering do the working class have to endure before their lives are portrayed with dignity and meaning?

One thing about this film that is consistently downbeat, and that the film maker had the good sense not to try and sugar coat, is the awful over crowding in modern Britain. This aspect is truly horrific, suffocating and overwhelming. And maybe this is the most topsy-turvy aspect of this film, that modern Britons are expected to endure this with good grace, but I don't know, I can't say.

The music is lovely as well, very well chosen, very understated. And its all in a minor key, of course.

Its films like this that re-affirm my faith in film as an artistic medium. But, although this film gives a sweet dignity to the recent past, it doesn't seem to hold out any real hope for the future. And it is this sidestepping of facile hopefulness where this movie really hits the deepest. This film says, in my opinion, that any progress towards a livable future is going to take everything we have to struggle to achieve.