Tuesday, May 24, 2016

Něco z Alenky (1988)


Czech director Jan Švankmajer had always been fond of the works of Lewis Carroll.  After making short stop-motion films based on "Jabberwocky" and similar topics, Švankmajer tried hid hand at a feature film that would combine live-action and stop-motion.  He said his aim with this adaptation was to take away the common fairy tale elements that most other directors embrace in the story.  He wanted his film to feel like a dream, an actual dream without reason, logic, or morals holding back the dreamer.

"While a fairy tale has got an educational aspect – it works with the moral of the lifted forefinger (good overcomes evil), dream, as an expression of our unconscious, uncompromisingly pursues the realisation of our most secret wishes without considering rational and moral inhibitions, because it is driven by the principle of pleasure. My Alice is a realised dream." - Švankmajer, 2011

The result is an effectively creepy yet interestingly clever take on the alice story.  There is very little dialogue, with Švankmajer choosing to rely on his visuals to retell the story.  Wonderland itself is presented as Alice's house, so many of the scenes take place in different bare rooms in a large house.


Original Source Breakdown

Alice's Adventures in Wonderland
Chapter I: Down the Rabbit Hole - MOSTLY INTACT/ALTERED

Alice starts outside with her sister by the river bank s her sister reads.  Alice informs the audience that the following story is best experienced with their eyes closed and the scene transitions to inside an attic where Alice is surrounded by knick knacks and household items.  The White Rabbit appears as a stuffed rabbit in a glass case who comes to life and leads Alice into a wasteland with a small desk drawer.  Alice travels through the drawer to find the Rabbit eating.  The Rabbit escapes and Alice, trying to find him, travels down a hole that is more like an elevator shaft.  She passes the Orange Marmalade along the way and finds herself in a room at the bottom (where an altered version of the key and door scene plays out).

Chapter II: The Pool of TearsMOSTLY INTACT/ALTERED
When Alice cannot get through the door, she cries and fills up the room with water.  The Mouse floats by and tries to set up camp on her head, but Alice sneezes him off.  The Rabbit rows by with some shrinking cakes and Alice eats one and manages to follow the current of the pool outside where she is attacked by birds.

Chapter III: The Caucus-Race and a Long Tale - REMOVED

Chapter IV: The Rabbit Sends in a Little Bill - MOSTLY INTACT/ALTERED
Alice meets up with the White Rabbit who sends her into his house.  After she grows and engages with a battle with the Rabbit, he summons other animals to flush Alice out.  Bill is sent down the chimney and kicked out.  After Alice shrinks and makes her escape, the animals all take revenge on her.  They chase her about Wonderland and succeed in catching her in a pot of milk that causes her to grow and become trapped in a life-size doll.  They lock her in a pantry where she breaks out of her plaster encasing.  She searches the odd foods in the pantry until she finds a key that allows her to escape.

Chapter V: Advice from a Caterpillar - MOSTLY INTACT/ALTERED
Alice discovers a room filled with Caterpillars (made out of socks).  One of them dons eyes and a mouth and fashions a mushroom and the two have their usual conversation (minus the poetry).  Alice cuts off two pieces of the mushroom and leaves the Caterpillars room.  She tests out the mushroom pieces in a room with trees (that shrink or grow, depending on which piece she eats).

Chapter VI: Pig and Pepper - MOSTLY REMOVED/ALTERED
Alice finds another room with a tiny house and a baby's screams and crashing sounds coming from within.  Alice gets a little closer in size to the house as she observes the Frog and Fish Footmen exchange the invitation.  When she peers into the house, the White Rabbit has taken over the roles of the Cook and Duchess, both feeding the baby and throwing dishes around.  The Rabbit throws Alice the Baby, who turns into a pig and runs out of the room.  There is no Cheshire Cat.

Chapter VII: A Mad Tea Party ALTERED
Alice encounters another room with the Hatter and Hare who are a string puppet and wind-up toy respectively.  The Hatter keeps the conversation going (nd at one point, pulls the White Rabbit out of his hat who leaves the room) while the Hare attempts to fix his watch.  Eventually, their actions begin to repeat as the Hatter drinks more and more tea, the Hare fixes more and more watches, and the two move around the table.  When every tea cup has been used, a mink fur (the Dormouse?) appears from a teapot, licks clean all the cups, and the whole cycle begins again, with the same dialogue.  Alice leaves, but checks in one last time as the White Rabbit is pulled out of the hat again, and Alice follows him this time to the Court of Cards.

Chapter VIII: The Queen's Croquet-Ground - ALTERED
When Alice enters the court, two Knaves are having a swordfight.  The Queen orders their execution, and the White Rabbit cuts off their heads with scissors (the bodies keep fighting).  Elsewhere in the court, the Hatter and Hare reappear, playing a card game.  The Queen orders their heads off as well, and the Rabbit follows suit.  The two creatures switch heads.  Finally, the cards play croquet and Alice finds that when she attempts to play, the equipment becomes actual living animals (chickens and hedgehogs).

Chapter IX: The Mock Turtle's Story - REMOVED
Chapter X: The Lobster-Quadrille - REMOVED


Chapter XI: Who Stole the Tarts? - MOSTLY REMOVED/ALTERED
Alice is immediately called to the stand for stealing the tarts.

Chapter XII: Alice's Evidence - ALTERED
Alice pleads that she is innocent, but during the course of the trial, she ends up eating all of the tarts.  The cards and creatures turn hostile and Alice wakes up back in the attic.  However, she notices that the stuffed White Rabbit is still missing from his case.  So she grabs the Rabbit's scissors and ponders over whether or not she should behead the Rabbit when she catches him...

Review:
I had seen this version of the film about four years ago when it was on Netflix and I thought it would be worth checking out.  The first time through, I had no idea what to expect.  I thought it was deeply unsettling, it moved too slow, and it made too many alterations to the story.  Revisiting the film has made me love it 10 times more.

Maybe it's the fact that I've sat through so many versions of Alice that are basically crbon copies of each other, but this dark and disturbing adaptation was a breath of fresh air.  My synopsis of each chapter doesn't even come close to conveying how fully realized and altered each chapter truly is.  The film begins with a sense that something is not right.  Alice is sitting with her sister, but we can't see her sister's head in the frame and her sister never even moves, even though it's a person playing the part.  Later, in the attic, we see doll versions of Alice and her sister, sitting in the exact same pose, implying that the two scenes were one and the same.


Also, after Alice instructs the audience to close their eyes, I noticed that the sounds of Alice in the attic are really sharp and unnerving.  For a few minutes, we keep hearing a "plop" of something in liquid, but the camera pan around the room and never shows us what could be making that sound.  It's an interesting technique to get the audience used to questioning what they see.  The stop-motion also allows for clever effects, such as Alice becoming the doll version of herself whenever she shrinks, which helps the audience tell what size Alice is supposed to be at any given time.


As the director stated, this is a very dreamlike Wonderland, in that you can imagine Alice having this nightmare based on the weird things found around her house.  The fact that Wonderland itself is her own house makes things even creepier, as she really has no place to escape to to feel safe.  That being said, Alice herself never seems too upset or off put by the weird events around her.  She's in the dream and just accepts things like the White Rabbit eating his own sawdust that is always falling out of its chest.  There are also humorous moments, like every time Alice encounters the desk drawer (which is always popping up), she always manages to accidentally pull the knob off before opening it.  This repetition and lack of success really makes the "dream" sensation come alive.


Speaking of the White Rabbit, he essentially becomes the villainous bogeyman of this whole story.  He is a lot more involved in every scene, and he is often violent towards Alice.  He carries a pair of scissors around with him during the whole movie, which pays off during the final scenes at the court where we see him take the role of executioner.


I remember the first time I saw this film, I disliked the Mad Tea Party, as the fun dialogue was no longer intact.  But this time, we get to literally see the effects of the trio being trapped in a perpetual tea time without the Hatter having to explain it to us.  The whole film is filled with these cool bits of suggestion that shows the real horrors that lie beneath Wonderland, and it all relies on the visuals.  Another cool bit of set-up and pay off is that in the attic, we see a mousetrap that is set and much later on as Alice passes from one room to the next, she passes by the Mouse from Chapter II dead in a trap.  It's this tragic little tale that plays out within the larger story.


Knowing what to expect this time around, this movie becomes an easy recommendation.  It doesn't feel like it's deliberately trying to be a scary film, as everything happens so matter of fact.  But the sense of dream logic is strong and it's only after you watch it that you realize how creepy everything truly was.  If you like your Wonderland to be as close to a nightmare as you can get in a kid's film, this is the version for you.

4.5 out of 5 Animal Skulls

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