Subject: RETROSPECTIVE: ALICE IN WONDERLAND (1951)

From: [email-masked] (Ram Samudrala)
Date: 4 Mar 1997 14:29:09 GMT

ALICE IN WONDERLAND
                       A film review by Ram Samudrala
                        Copyright 1997 Ram Samudrala

/Alice in Wonderland/ and /In Through the Looking Glass/, by Lewis
Carroll (aka Charles Lutwig Dodgson) are two of my all time favourite
stories.  While they are highly engaging as works of non-sense for
children and adults, the contrast between what which we perceive to be
sense and non-sense illustrates the weaknesses in our perception when
it comes to our ideas of logic and rationality.

Walt Disney's production of an animated /Alice in Wonderland/ mixes
parts from these two stories and is bitter-sweet in realisation of the
wonders of Caroll's imagination.  There are scenes that are pure
genius that go beyond anything I could've imagined after reading the
words, and there are some that completely disappointed me.

While it is nice that the two stories are mixed, since Disney probably
never planned on a sequel, I would have preferred them kept separate
and had two films instead.  Here's why:

In /Alice in Wonderland/, Alice follows the White Rabbit down the
rabbit-hole, swims in a pool of her tears, meets the Mouse and
participates in the Causus-race, ends up at the White Rabbit's house
and meets Bill, takes advice from a Hookah-smoking Caterpillar,
frightens a pigeon into thinking she's a serpent, encounters the
Duchess, the sneezing baby/pig and the Chesire Cat, goes to the Mad
Tea Party, plays croquet with the Queen of Hearts, meets the Mock
Turtle and the Gryphon, does the Lobster Quadrille, and attends a
trial to find out who stole the Queen of Hearts' Tarts.

In /In Through the Looking Glass/, Alice meets the Red Queen, reads
Jabberwocky, goes through the garden of Live Flowers, meets the
Looking Glass insects (including the Rocking-Horse Fly), encounters
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, (who recite the Walrus and the Carpenter),
meets the White Queen, the Sheep in the shop, Humpty Dumpty, the Lion
and the Unicorn, the Red and White Knights, and Alice finally beomes a
Queen, castles, takes the Red Queen and wins (as you can see, there is
a great analogy to a chess game here).

Disney's version mixes the two stories above by making some serious
changes in /Alice in Wonderland/: the progress from pool to tears to
White Rabbit's house is rushed, the entire sub-plot with the Duchess
is eliminated, as is the sub-plot involving the Mock Turtle and the
Gryphon, and it is Alice who is on trial, not the Knave of Hearts; and
takes the following bits from /In Through the Looking Glass/: the
garden of Live Flowers, the Looking Glass insects, Tweedledum and
Tweedledee (along with the Walrus and the Carpenter).  In doing this
mixing and matching, I think Disney corrupts the continuity of the
original stories and leaves several important bits. Worst of all, they
have the Chesire Cat reciting Jabberwocky (which didn't work for me at
all):

"'Twas brilling, and the slighty toves
 Did gyre and gimble in the wabe;
 All mimsy were the borogoves,
 and the mome raths outgrabe."
     ---Jabberwocky, from In Through the Looking Glass

What /did/ work was the hookah-smoking caterpillar---the smoke coming
out took on weird interesting shapes a description of which I think
should belong in the story!  I also liked the croquet game with the
Queen of Hearts, the garden of Live Flowers, and to some extent the
sub-plot involving Tweedledum and Tweedledee and the Walrus and the
Carpenter.

I highly recommend reading the two stories in their original form and
then renting this video out.  I suspect that not everyone is as
affected by this as I am, but I consider implications in these stories
to be the equivalent to the profound ones found in scientific theories
such as relativity and quantum mechanics.

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