There is an old joke about how your grandma accidentally buys the wrong movie, filling you with disappointment. It’s usually some knock-off that has vaguely similar box art, meant to fool the rubes into dropping a few bucks on an inferior product. Sometimes the story is just bad, other times it’s an irresponsible journey into something dark and horrific. I for one remember walking through a Blockbuster sometime in 1998 and discovering the box art for Jack Frost (1997). I had seen trailers for the Michael Keaton version and grew confused when I saw this cover have a dual image of a snowman who smiled when you swung it one way only to have it turn into a vicious murderer on the other. What is this, Goosebumps?
This is precisely how I felt this past week when I took to The Criterion Channel to pick a random movie. I rarely turn to the streaming service with a title in mind, eager to find high-quality entertainment waiting at my fingertips. Somewhere among the rubble was this movie Alice (1988). I had saved it into my queue years ago, thinking that it would be this fun and delightful romp. On this particular night, it was calling my name. Maybe it was because my runner-up, Wim Wenders’ Alice in the Cities (1974), gave me the sense that I was just in the mood for an Alice movie. Who knows… if I just walked over to my shelf I would’ve watched Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974).
But it sounded appealing. There was an adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s excellent “Alice in Wonderland” available to watch. I put myself on the list of people who really admire that book and feel like it’s a real accomplishment in wordplay, playing with logic and arithmetic in ways that whimsical and fun. Oh sure, you COULD argue that it’s about drugs, but that’s a lazy interpretation of things. This is just a very accomplished fantasy book where nothing makes sense and yet the picture is so vivid that you are entranced by the whole thing.
Considering that I am going through a small Czech New Wave phase right now, too I was eager to see what Jan Švankmajer had to offer. I wasn’t familiar with his work, but I knew that the fine folks out of Czechoslovakia weren’t going to bore me. I wondered what a world cinema interpretation of this story would bring out. Considering that this was his first feature length after decades making shorts, I just had to believe that he saw something in this story that was worth sharing with the world. His only claim is that he didn’t see it as a fantasy, but an “amoral dream.” I don’t know what that means, but let’s get going…
The reason that I bring up the grandma analogy is because I really felt that way from the minute this started. I want to make it abundantly clear that this isn’t a wholesome interpretation of “Alice in Wonderland.” Even the nihilistic and cynical take from Tim Burton is much more pleasant to look at than what Švankmajer was going for. If I had to make a comparison, I would say that this film feels like a live-action/stop motion hybrid with an intentional lingering discomfort that you might get watching Coraline (2009). Everything looks just enough off that you’re left constantly squirming, feeling parts of your body convulsing that you didn’t know you had.
I should’ve guessed how strange it was when Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová) was presented in cutaway segments where she presented text presumably from the book. This would also happen every time another character would talk. While she would do their dialogue within the confines of "reality," any break from quotations cut to a close-up of her mouth, saying things like “cried The White Rabbit” in a calm and collected manner. It’s hypnotic, adding this surreal subtext of the story. The truth is that while Alice feels trapped in this world, there’s something about her being omniscient that is creepy. Is she secretly in control of everything and not telling us? What is going on? She even introduces the audience to the film in a very casual manner, and it’s borderline misleading by how friendly it sounds.
Then again, I should’ve known to hunker down and prepare for the worst when Alice introduced The White Rabbit, breaking out of its cage and preparing its journey to “Wonderland” in a desk in the middle of the field. While that shot is radiant and beautiful, reflecting a fantastical depiction of reality that is compelling, The White Rabbit is a stop-motion puppet that never becomes pretty to look at. The eyes are bulgy and the frame may look like a rabbit, but one that feels dismantled and reassembled. I’m pretty sure every character here is supposed to look like a toy, but then it only raises a question as to why Alice would find any of this pleasant.
Švankmajer has only given us five minutes and I’m already so confused. I’ll admit that a lot of these presumptions are things I developed later, but he has this way of scratching at the surface of our brain, slowly making the nerve rawer with each new idea. We second-guess ourselves throughout this whole journey, and it comes from the typical “Why are we watching this?” to what any of this means. This isn’t a Wonderland that we know. There is no journey down a hole. It’s into a desk and into a house that reminds me of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper.” Every room opens a new type of nightmare, and by the hour mark, you’re going to dread opening the next door.
Though to be fair, the first 20 minutes qualify more as plain Eastern European weirdness. You can rationalize a little girl climbing into a desk. Things like crying so much that she floods a room are done so practically that you admire Švankmajer’s craft. Even the use of cookies is given a clever twist as she manages to grow and shrink. She goes from nearly busting the roof off to the size of a doll, wandering around hopelessly, and The White Rabbit paddles a boat around, trying to find the way into the next room. Švankmajer creates a unique perspective that is still borderline eerie but feels like a perfectly abstract interpretation of Carroll’s novel. The set design on this is incredible, ranging from the familiar to the increasingly strange.
I know that you can argue that artists like Burton have prepared you for something like Alice, but I assure you that there’s a reason his made a billion dollars. There’s an aesthetic that at least is pleasant. Everything about Švankmajer’s vision is designed in an old-timey kind of creepy that has just the right level of creakiness in it. Everything was done with practical effects in ways that bring to life some bizarre creations. They’re pretty admirable in the way that you’re just confused about how anyone could come up with these designs but add in their sometimes jerky camera editing, and what you get is full of nightmare fuel.
Though before I get into them, I want to mention another detail that personally bothered me most. At unexpected times, the video would freeze while the audio kept going. While I’m willing to think it could’ve been my WiFi connection, the more logical argument is that Švankmajer intended it this way, as yet another example of creatively messing with our heads. Along with cutting to Alice narrating her own story, there are moments when our brain is forced to process the next dozen seconds while having to come to terms with the concern that the video will never recover. Those seconds are interminable, making you uneasy on top of the already strange creations. Everything does catch up with itself, proving that this is all some dreamlike tease, but boy has a static shot not been this unpleasant since a Michael Haneke movie.
I suppose there is whimsy in Alice, but you’re more likely to get caught up in the strangeness of it all. The story continues in abstract ways from room to room. One of the most horrifying examples comes early on when The White Rabbit has a series of creatures with skeleton heads (big eyes and all) try to break into the house where Alice has grown to full size while looking for a key. They’re getting into a fight with her, throwing stuff from a nearby garden as she waves her hands out a window, sending them to their doom. Also, everyone doesn’t bleed in this. They all have sawdust for organs, and it’s maybe the most compassionate thing Švankmajer did for his characters, even if it never makes sense.
There are even points where I’m not even sure that they were from the book. I’m not sure where The Cheshire Cat wound up. There’s even a point where Alice becomes a full-sized ceramic doll whose abrupt appearance is strange. Again, everything happens with such confidence that you can’t help but admire the production design of this story. Someone is genuinely connected to a vision, where the house becomes more warped as things go on, where the floorboards begin to hide secrets, and the sense of madness and discomfort grow gradually. On the one hand, it’s the most unexpected Carroll adaptation imaginable (even the “X-Rated Musical Fantasy” from 1976 seems more plausible) and sometimes you feel like the narrative is lost because you can’t figure out what’s going on. However, it all comes together in a way that is indeed a dream by the end while still hitting every major beat.
What is bizarre is that while The White Rabbit is one of the freakier creations, he still manages to make every room feel like an unpleasant sight waiting to be discovered. As they waddle down a stairwell full of lopsided steps, they go to The March Hare and The Mad Hatter, who may look more conventional, but whose table manners are a bit upsetting. Cartoon butter on clocks somehow is pleasant, but everything here becomes disturbing in repetition, and you just want to get out of this room. Later on, you’ll get a frog who stares directly at the camera and I swear it’s the freakiest thing in the whole film. It gave me David Lynch-level nightmares.
It also doesn’t help that it ends with a cheeky joke of Alice discovering that it was all a dream, even though The White Rabbit’s cage is destroyed. While you’d think this was a clever way of suggesting that it was real, it only adds layers of confusion to it. Why would Alice have these fantasies? Is she a psychopath, or is Eastern European culture just that different? I guess this movie would be appropriate for kids, but I’d imagine they’d have nightmares from not understanding how to process these images. Not only that, but it ends with Alice gleefully declaring that she’s going to cut off The White Rabbit’s head. Smiling at the camera, it’s a moment that is meant to be cute, but given the past 90 minutes, it’s all a bit homicidal.
I’m not against others watching this, but I want you to know that there’s a big difference between this and the popular American adaptations. They’re a lot friendlier and welcoming. I’d argue they’re maybe even more directly faithful to the source material. While I think that Švankmajer does an incredible job of interpreting the ideas into something new in tone, it is like renting the horror movie version of Jack Frost when you want the Michael Keaton one.
General audiences aren’t ready for this art house interpretation, I promise you. Those who like to challenge themselves may be more likely to take the risks. Even then, this is more than weirdness for the sake of weird. It’s so expertly designed and the set is so inspiring that I love this film. I love that it gave me such a wild experience, unlike any other film I’ve seen recently. Be warned. If you find old-timey trinkets scary, then you’d best steer clear. If you like to challenge yourself with images that don’t always make sense then, and I mean it sincerely, go nuts.
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