“I’m afraid so. You’re mad, bonkers, off-your head. But I’ll tell you a secret, all the best people are.”
Some of the opening lines of Alice in Wonderland seem to sum up both the film and its creators perfectly. Released in 2010, Alice in Wonderland takes on a new plot thanks to screenwriter Linda Woolverton. But Tim Burton treats the tale as his own. Complete with his whimsical artistic aesthetic, Alice and Wonderland may not be a strong enough film to stand on its own but fits perfectly into Burton’s catalog of films.
The film is set in English Victorian times, with elaborate and fantastic costumes; the “real world” outside of wonderland appears to be a scene out of Brideshead Revisited. Thanks to Oscar-winning costume designer Colleen Atwood, the classic tan and pale blue Victorian corsets and petticoats are just as elaborate as the costumes seen in Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette. In fact, Alice in Wonderland draws on a similar theme – suppressed teenagers within a suppressive aristocratic world – as Marie Antoinette. Uncomfortable with and scornful of anything proper, Alice (played by Mia Waskikowska) wants out of everything relating to arranged marriages and extreme Victorian societal norms. She is an outsider, a Socratic rebel to say the least, always being reminded by others of her place in this world. “I was thinking what it would be like to fly,” Alice says during a posh English party. “Why would you waste your time thinking of impossible things?” exclaims her soon-to-be fiancé.
As we’ve seen in Heathers and Mean Girls, angsty teenage characters are often desperate to escape their own lives. When they finally do, they realize they are just as unhappy as they were before. Alice feels unfulfilled in Wonderland, where her role is set as the slayer of the Jabberwock in order to return peace to Wonderland. Like Veronica, JD, and Cady Heron, it is only at the end of this film that Alice discovers it isn’t where you are that determines whether you’re feeling content and happy despite outside influences and social norms.
Alice in Wonderland finds Burton continuing his exploration of a number of themes and cinematic styles that have become so closely associated with him. The film sheds light on why Burton maybe is one of the great film auteurs of our generation. What Alfred Hitchcock was to the Baby Boomer generation, Burton is to us, the dreamers and people of the XYZ generation. Auteurs like Hitchcock and François Truffaut stuck to what they knew best and rarely ventured outside a film genre. Hitchcock stuck to suspense, thrill, and aloof females. With Burton it’s a somewhat similar story, but instead of suspense there’s animation and this haunting obscure quality to the plot and characters. What Hitchcock achieved with films, such as Vertigo and Psycho, was this amazing feeling of suspense and thrill. With Burton, the audience is thrown into this dream-like world, escaping the somewhat violent and media-frenzy world we experience today. If anything Alice in Wonderland reaffirms Burton's consistent theme of parallel universes. Alice falls down a hole into Wonderland, just as Jack Skellington from The Nightmare Before Christmas travels through a set of doors in the depth of the words into a universe of Christmas. Or as Victor Van Dort in Corpse Bride travels through this mystical and supernatural portal into the realm of the living dead. Or as Leo Davidson slips through time to a planet of the apes.
What Tim Burton conveys in his films, such as Alice in Wonderland, is an escape from reality into a universe of the wonderful and unthinkable, the impossible even. And sometimes, you need to think a few impossible things. Maybe even before breakfast.
Liz Rossman
British Literature II
No comments:
Post a Comment