In 1865 Lewis Carroll brought to life a subversive text that dared to challenge our perception of the world. Though often viewed as a children’s fairytale, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland would speak to various generations as a reminder of what we leave behind when maturing into adults. It’s often considered one of the first pieces of surrealist literature, showcasing drug-like visuals and nonsensical characters. There’s no real plot to Carroll’s adventure; it simply is.
With the book being centuries old at this point, it’s been no stranger to countless adaptations. The first film adaptation came in 1903, being a short silent film that made use of its limited capabilities. So many other adaptations have come and gone, a select handful being considered iconic, but one “adaptation” had skirted by with so much as a quick, traumatising Hello. The directorial debut of one Jan Svankmajer.
This Czech director had always wanted to reimagine Carroll’s iconic tale, but with how strict the government was about expressionism and his lack of credibility, Svankmajer felt the struggle any ambitious first-timer has to go through: seeing his dream come to life. And what is Alice in Wonderland without the word dream? It’s the very thing Carroll championed with his immediate piece of counter-culture in a time when such thing could label you as mad-mad as a hatter, you might say. So, with some help with cross-continental laws and legal loop holes, the ambitious director managed to make one of the boldest, most memorable, most terrifying versions of the story he could. This isn’t a simple adaptation, this Jan Svankmajer’s bold 1988 interpretation Alice.
To those expecting a simple retelling of this universally known story, you’ll be sorely disappointed. This particular story is more inspired by the tales of the young Alice (played here by Kristyna Kohoutova). Much like the original book, it starts with Alice being scolded by her mother for her overactive imagination. The wide-eyed girl finds herself in solemn seclusion amongst her various stuffed animals and taxidermy creatures-yes, taxidermy. Slipping out of consciousness, she sees the once stuffed white rabbit that sat in a glass case now come to life, removing a pair of scissors from a secret compartment and panicking over the time. Alice follows the rabbit into a wasteland of sorts, and finds herself immersed in a drearier version of the Wonderland we’ve heard so much of.
At this point, much of the story merely presents snippets of the iconography that Carroll created. We see Alice drink a size-changing potion, but rather than turn into a tiny version of herself, she transforms into a doll. We see her visit the house of the rabbit, but it’s made of building blocks and the creatures that surround him aren’t the colourful creatures of Carroll’s imagination, but skeletal heads placed on toy bodies. We have a society of sock creatures, a puppet Mad Hatter and literal playing cards come to life. The uncanny implications of Wonderland had suddenly become the vision of Svankmajer’s world.
Telling the same story again and again can be nothing short of exhausting. So much of Carroll’s surrealism may have been swung this way and that, but there’s typically a uniformity that makes each one blend into this single piece, with the same beats and general childish joy. Then there’s Alice. A film that is so different from these other versions because no other director has had the same experience. For Svankmajer, this has more depth than simply holding onto imagination.
That is, of course, not to say that the charm and wonderment of the original novel is lost. Alice is still as endearing a character as ever. But the world she faces is far more nightmarish. Svankmajer drew inspiration from the various oddities of his childhood. The focus on puppetry and stop motion effects spoke to his days putting on puppet shows for his family. Looking back to the original intent of the book, Alice blends both experiences together in a cacophony of general creativity and specific experience with said creativity. It’s a warped view of childhood from a man who experienced it so differently.
You see this contrast in how sewn together everything looks. It can’t be a simple case of wildly diverse animals lighting up the path. No, it’s a collection of objects and antiquities that would fit into a mad doctor’s lab. The White Rabbit cannot simply be a standard rabbit; it’s a stuffed rabbit that frequently leaks sawdust and looks as though it’s going to charge at the screen at any moment. We get a playground of maddening toys that seems unusual to us, but are perfectly normal for our titular observer.
It is still Alice that drives the film onwards. Something that was nicely implemented was the way Alice narrates everything going on. She provides the voices of the characters and narrates the dialogue as if reading book. We get this in extreme close-ups of the young actress’ mouth, being the ever-faithful narrator. This is Alice’s view of this fantastical world, and we’re just as lost and wide-eyed as she is.
What’s so perfect about this vision of Wonderland is that Svankmajer is subtly injecting himself into the perspective of Alice. The contrast of brown backgrounds and decaying designs is something that becomes nostalgic in a way that we may not fully understand. A lot of this is down to Svankmajer’s need to fight against the Czech government’s insistence of snuffing out surrealism. Everything here is in spite of those regulations, using the excuse of a child’s imagination to fight the very powers that oppress such things. After all, a child’s imagination is something sacred.
But then comes the argument of whether this is truly for children. The imagery in the film is disturbing in many ways. The designs are more abstract and the stop motion effects lend the typical uncanniness that comes with such animation. Even the simplicity of a sock coming to life, adorned with glass eyes and false teeth, feels frightening, even to an adult. There’s other details, such as the fact that the White Rabbit is consistently dropping his dust all over the place and sewing up his stomach. There’s the placid look in the Mad Hatter’s face, being an old-fashioned wooden puppet. And then you observe the surroundings, most of which take place in an old house with creaking floorboards and condensed spaces.
That imagery is partially down to the budget and the team being incredibly small. Svankmajer is having to use the fullest of his creativity to make use of what he has. But then that invokes the original intent Carroll always wanted to put through. Ultimately, the story of Alice in Wonderland is a tale of childhood innocence and the encouragement to restore that creative side of us that we have lost. Svankmajer understands this perfectly, and is showing us how much can be done with very little. The assortment of knick-knacks and liminal space become the greatest strength of the film, all without a soundtrack or secondary character to aid Alice on her journey.
I doubt you’ll find a more diverse or distinct interpretation of Carroll’s beloved novel. It blends fantasy with practicality, taking advantage of the space a child can occupy. We lose ourselves as we get older. We forget how wide our imaginations could be and how far they could take us. Some turn that into making pieces of art or anything else you could deem creative. Alice emanates this feeling of passion, the power to turn something so monumental to your life into something else.
Alice is a film I think of constantly. Some may have memories of this playing on Channel 4 not long after it’s initial release, suppressing it into a memory that reawakens upon seeing a single frame. I don’t have that experience, but I do have that sense of imagination that I’ve always maintained since my childhood. There’s a whole world of creativity we bury as we age, waiting to be used productively. Alice is that meeting of two mindsets. It’s a nightmarish, but oddly whimsical, interpretation that will never leave your head. Pray you don’t lose it.
Written review by Conor Johnson.