ALICE
A film review by Shane R. Burridge
Copyright 1995 Shane R. Burridge
(1988) 86 min
This astonishing reworking of ALICE IN WONDERLAND was the first feature to be made by Czech surrealist animator Jan Svankmayer after two decades of producing short films. He served his apprenticeship well, employing all he had learned with his previous experiments to fully realize this combination of stop-motion animation, live action, and puppetry. Lewis Carroll's classic story has always been too erratically-paced and episodic to be successfully translated to film, but Svankmajer makes the text completely his own. It is his audacious, subversive interpretation of Carroll's ALICE that makes this film so fascinating.
The Wonderland of Svankmajer's imagination is set entirely within the confines of a series of connecting rooms. We watch Alice journeying down shabby stairwells and riding an industrial elevator, and wonder if she is descending into some kind of Hell. At any rate, the characters inhabiting it do that concept justice. The denizens of Wonderland are outcasts - they are assembled of leftovers (bones, sawdust, furs ... the Caterpillar is merely a sock!) and do not inhabit Wonderland so much as squat there. They're like the homeless and down-at-heel of Wonderland, who have found a deserted building to occupy. Their faces are immobile and emotionless - the White Rabbit (a scary character) has the same wild, fixed stare and clacking teeth whether he's handing Alice an envelope or throwing plates at her. Kristyna Kohoutova, who plays Alice, takes a neutral stance within everything she encounters. Svankmajer does not allow her much expression - he even has her cover her face the only time she laughs - and at several points in the story she actually becomes a puppet herself.
Svankmajer has gone on record as saying that all of his films are political, but surely this comment is more appropriate to his short subjects. If what he says is to be taken literally then it is possible to see a similarity between ALICE's Wonderland and the entropy of postwar Eastern Europe. There are cockroaches and nails in food, there are re-animated animal corpses everywhere, rooms are littered with debris, every door is locked and requires a key - it is certainly barren and oppressive. Is Svankmajer making a comment on his own childhood? It's certainly not for all tastes. Cultists of the book will find many of its familiar icons dramatically reworked in the film (the Cheshire Cat is truly invisible - he's not even in it!) but should bear in mind that as an animator, Svankmajer has adapted the story primarily as a visual experience. Hence the wordplay and verbal conundrums of the book are gone, although there is the occasional visual pun (e.g. socks in holes instead of holes in socks). His unique vision may be the most accurate representation of the mood of the books since Tenniel established his original illustrations over a hundred years ago. A must-see - but definitely not with the intrusion of television advertisements
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