Reliving Fond Memories
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Alice
The start of a curious adventure...
Alice gets no respect.
Considered a "B" movie since its premiere, "Alice in Wonderland� did marginal business. It is not the usual Disney fare, people complained. The movie has no warmth, the characters are unsympathetic, there is no clear villain. This also mixed with the fact that viewers, and it seems, filmmaker's alike don't seem to "get" what Alice is all about. For film makers through the years have reduced this subtle, and very "English" story to the equivalent of a vaudeville food fight. The book, sadly, seems unable to translate satisfactorily to the big or small screen.
Disney's version of the movie, while having some beautiful moments and of course winning animation, remains distant from the audience. I don't believe Disney or his animators really understood the underpinnings of the story. OR if they did, they thought it would get in the way. Disney's Alice is a study in frustration: It should be a great movie, but lack of insight cripples it from the go.
We Americans like our stories direct and to the point, and Alice is anything but. It is the story of a child looking at the strange, nonsensical world of adults. Strange, that is, according to a child. A friend of mine once pointed out, and I completely agree, that "Alice" would be a better movie if our hero was younger. In the original Mary Blair pre production art, Alice is indeed younger; completely perplexed by an odd world that doesn't mean anything. Wisdom indeed, coming from the mouth of a little girl.
During the last rehab, the Alice attraction
received a colorful paint job.
Also it gave Lewis Carroll a chance to make sly comments on the politics of the day. The caterpillar was a caricature of a politician in Victorian England. The Queen of Hearts: Here is a manifestly irresponsible (and possibly) mad person in charge. It is a masquerade that everyone gladly keeps going (In the book no one really loses their head. Sentence is pronounced, the guilty is then quietly sent to "the back of the line"). The whole edifice of royalty, indeed of government is nothing but a
Down down down...
HOUSE OF CARDS. It is a sham, perpetrated with eyes wide open, progressing due only to the implicit agreement of all involved. Come on, Alice sees this, why can't YOU??
Sentence first, verdict afterwards!
Safe inside the White Rabbit's house. Where is Mary Ann?
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Posted: 3/21/10