Curiouser and Curiouser

This post is a companion post to my friend Aiichiro's post on the same subject. I would link to it, but my Mac browser doesn't let me do it easily, so you will just have to trust me when I say that he wrote about this first. Anyway, as someone who enjoyed art and wanted to be an artist at a very early age, I was naturally attracted to kids books with superior illustrations. I liked Maurice Sendak, Edward Gorey, etc. But my favorite illustrations were the ones Sir John Tenniel had done for Lewis Carroll's Alice books. After I admired the pictures and tried copying them in my own notebooks, I actually read "Alice in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking Glass" and was so happy to find out the stories were (unlike the Disney film) brilliantly complex, humorous, and completely sarcastic. Carroll, through these books, is able to show how ridiculous the adult world must seem to children, and poke fun at imperialism at its worst to boot.

I've seen several versions of Alice in Wonderland and have never been satisfied because they have all seemed too cutesy, and Alice isn't cute - she's strong, and whiny, sometimes a brat, and very often full of common sense. I like Alice, because she is not passive - she explores the worlds she's dropped into and discovers new things. Most versions of Alice focused on the putting famous actors in caterpillar or turtle costumes and having them dance around like theme-park mascots.

Enter Jan Svenkmajer, Eastern European stop-action animator. I'd heard he'd made a version of "Alice" in the 80s but after my sister and her friend had seen another of his films, "Little Otek" (about a child made out of a stump of wood - a child that grows and devours neighbors), I kept putting it off. I didn't want to be disturbed. When I saw YouTube had some clips of "Alice", I watched them and then ordered myself a copy of the film. It IS a bit disturbing, but not in a bad way, and it completely captures the feeling of the original books without resorting to sentimentality. In fact, it's completely unsentimental. At times, Svenkmajer's wonderland is nightmarish and his Alice, who is correctly played much younger than in most adaptations, is run through the wringer (is it wringer? or ringer? I think it must be wringer because you are wringing out water as from recently warshed (I actually spelled that incorrectly on accident, so I'll leave it) clothes).

After watching the film, I had to bring it to Aiichiro because he quotes Alice at least once a week and has a special love, bordering on obsession, for this book (which to me is very cool).

So for your viewing pleasure (Liz, you will love the teeth!), I am including Svenkmajer's version of Alice and the caterpillar (it's four minutes long, but you can spare four minutes for bizarre, can't you? I thought so.):