drawers and doors
by Douglas Messerli
Jan
Švankmajer (writer and director) Něco z
Alenky (Alice) / 1988
The great Czech animator’s first full feature
film, Alice, is not so much a
retelling of Lewis Carroll’s beloved Alice
in Wonderland as it is a kind of “riff” on Carroll’s work, or, to
contextualize it more with the academic community, is a deconstruction of the
original Alice. Indeed, the Czech
title for the film means “Something from Alice,” suggesting that the work is a
product of Alice’s creation as opposed to a hallucinatory tale which occurs to
her. Throughout his film Švankmajer makes sure the viewer perceives that this
is Alice’s tale, as he presents all the film’s dialogue (dubbed in the version
I saw into English) through closeups of Alice’s lips as she speaks the words of
The White Rabbit, The Mad Hatter, etc.

This
director’s Alice, far from being a genteel Victorian child of Carroll’s
fantasies, is a rather bored, rock-throwing girl, determined even from the very
first scenes to get into trouble. Švankmajer’s Alice (Kristýna Kohoutová),
living in a derelict room filled with the detritus of not only her own
childhood, but of the mysterious family
in which she lives, is surrounded by a world that, quite literally, is falling
apart. A bit like Czechoslovakia itself under the Soviet rule, doors are in bad
need of painting, walls veer up more like ancient images of decay, covered over
with peeling wallpaper and layers of yellowing lace, than a world of Victorian
protection.
The
moment the child’s taxidermically stuffed rabbit comes to life, escaping its
glass case, Alice almost passively follows, determined, just like the always
late rabbit, to escape her own role in the suffocating world in which she is
also encased.
Locked away in a room where she almost drowns from her own tears, with a
mouse staking territory upon her own head, she is freed only to become again
locked away in a children’s playhouse like a giant caught in a Lilliputian
world on the attack. At one point even socks become animated enemies, boring
away holes in the very floor on which she stands. One of the socks, stealing an
eye for itself and a pair of dentures, becomes Carroll’s famed Caterpillar. But
the dance of his kindred brothers is more like a serpent kingdom which attempts
to charm even her own stockings off her feet.

Perhaps the most wonderful scene is Alice’s encounters with two
marvelous puppet-toys, the Mad Hatter and the March Hare, as they move up and
down the tea tables with the Mad Hatter calling out for clean cups while
rewinding his friend up so that they might continue their meaningless
conversations.
The Red Queen, who demands their heads, is
a playing card—quite literally, the Queen of a deck of cards and a card acting
out her theater in front of various Victorian-like theater sets. This Alice has
no idea what to say in the short trial which proceeds her own possible
beheading.
In
short, Švankmajer’s world presents less
of a fantastic pageant than a psychological playing out of the young girl’s own
frustrated limitations, a girl caught in a glass case as surely as the White
Rabbit had been in his. Upon “awakening,” Alice
discovers all of her beloved toys still surrounding her—except the Rabbit,
whose case remains cracked open, the figure missing. So we cannot be certain
whether she has merely had a horrible dream and suffered a “real” nightmare
induced by her culture itself. If you see this film in a theater, leave the
children at home. It’s hard to imagine them pondering the significant
differences—and terrorizing consequences—of these two alternatives.
Los
Angeles, September 23, 2012
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