110: Alice (a.k.a. Neco z Alenky)

            “Alice thought to herself ‘Now you will see a film... made for children... perhaps...’ But, I nearly forgot... you must... close your eyes... otherwise... you won't see anything.”

            It’s the “perhaps” that makes the opening monologue of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice (1988) intriguing. In fact, it sets up one of the fundamental questions about this strange Czechoslovakian picture.  Unlike the more recent trend of commercial children’s movies that have something for adults as well – such as Babe (1995) or the best films from the Pixar studio – Alice may be a film for adults simply masquerading as a kid’s movie.  A similar feat was attempted with the animated Animal Farm (1954), a colorful rendering of the classic allegorical novel, but where that film succeeded I’m not sure that Alice pulls off the trick.  The simple fact is that though the combination of a single live actor, the young Kristýna Kohoutová as Alice (who is occasionally represented by a dole), and stop-motion figures in the supporting parts is visually engaging, it is used in a way by the director which might scare children more than delight them.

            While the film and these figures represent some of the best use and execution of stop-motion photography that I can recall, the way in which Svankmajer presents them feels dark, and often borders on the disturbing.  Though the director primarily adheres to the classic children’s tale by Lewis Carroll, he adds his own twist on the visual imagery, once employing a shot of raw beef, brought to life through the technique, slithering across the screen.  Likewise, classic characters such as the White Rabbit and March Hare seem grotesque as they shed sawdust innards and lose eyes made of buttons.  In the most surreal scene of the picture, Alice meets the Caterpillar, a sock with a pair of human false teeth and glass eyeballs which he sows shut when he becomes tired.

            As I watched Alice I anticipated some of the familiar sequences of the Carroll classic, but more often than not I found that each scene dragged, beating the dead horse with the point that Wonderland is filled with oddities and eccentric characters.  It’s clear throughout the film that the elements of Alice’s adventure are the doodads and trinkets of her playroom, which must have once doubled as biology laboratory, rearranged by her subconscious.  This makes as I said for an arresting visual style, but even at a mere 86 minutes the picture feels long.  Svankmajer scripted the piece so that the supporting characters are all voiced by Kohoutová.  This serves as a nod to the dream world in which the story takes place but makes for a poor aural pallet to draw from, and a mind-numbingly repetitive cut to a close-up of Kohoutová’s mouth as she narrates phrases such as “...yelled the Mad Hater.”

            If Alice were a 30 minute film, or if multiple voices had been employed in the production, I can see giving it a positive review.  No doubt it should be given credit for its original visual style which you can see elements of in James and the Giant Peach (1996) and Guillermo Del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), but it fails on the whole as feature.  Like Carroll’s original work it functions effectively as a manipulation of size and objects of the physical world.  Unlike that work, it falls short of being a compelling narrative.        

Language: Czech (dubbed to English)

Runtime: 86 Minutes

Available through Netflix.com

Grade: 1 Hat Off