Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland has many scenes of jaw-dropping beauty, and my favorite was an homage to Maxfield Parrish’s Daybreak, a painting that changes color depending on the time of day at which you see it.
I found it fascinating that Burton’s adventurous Alice becomes a Joan of Arc figure and a dragon slayer, who flees marriage to set sail on the high seas.
Larry Rohter quotes the screenwriter in a film review for the NYT:
Linda Woolverton . . . said that when she began her script, she “did a lot of research on Victorian mores, on how young girls were supposed to behave, and then did exactly the opposite.” As she put it, “I was thinking more in terms of an action-adventure film with a female protagonist” than a Victorian maiden.
“I do feel it’s really important to depict strong-willed, empowered women,” she added, “because women and girls need role models, which is what art and characters are. Girls who are empowered have an opportunity to make their own choices, difficult choices, and set out on their own road.”
Perhaps someone can weigh in one the ending and the trading post in China?
I agree that the film was beautiful, and overall, I found the plot compelling and transporting, but I loathed the ending. First, it seems to bely some of the more radical social messages in the film (I’ve already written about this at some length so I won’t bang on about it here); second, it infuriates me that the ending is supposed to be empowering or liberating. The Alice we see at the beginning of the film–who rejects cultural norms and societal structures–is subsumed at the end of the film by a moralizing entrepreneur who appears to have no interests beyond her own pleasure and success. Alice transforms from a courageous and imaginative young woman to an insipid one. Although her actions may rebel against Victorian values they’re perfectly aligned with contemporary American myths about how to achieve success, happiness, and equality. If I were Alice, I’d much prefer to stay in Burton’s (liberated) Wonderland (not Carroll’s, though!), where there appears to be genuine acceptance, parity, and even a kind of weird joy in everyday life.
The Alice we see at the beginning of the film–who rejects cultural norms and societal structures–is subsumed at the end of the film by a moralizing entrepreneur who appears to have no interests beyond her own pleasure and success. Alice transforms from a courageous and imaginative young woman to an insipid one.cheap ebooks
I have to confess I was one of those who didn’t care for the Burton “Alice” film as a whole (despite some gorgeous visuals). My reaction was not out of any sense of purism per se (I am quite fond of the 1951 cartoon, and the Svankmayer film, for example), or fear of social radicalism as such, but more out of a disappointment with the lazy and manipulative storytelling. In addition to Woolverton’s tendency to ape the Dorothy-Scarecrow relationship from the classic “Oz” film (I mean, how many dewy-eyed, meaningful silent exchanges did Alice and the Hatter really need to have?), I found it more than a little disturbing that the screenwriter’s images of female power were three women wielding weapons: the Queen of Hearts, who beheads people regularly, the female dormouse who brandishes a tiny sword and uses it, and Alice herself, who is required to slay the Jabberwock and drink its blood to fulfill her destiny. It seemed to me that Woolverton was making “empowerment” equal brute force, a message I find regrettable in any movie, regardless of whether it is trying to “empower” boys or girls. Was this really the only way their Alice could have grown or had an epiphany?
The film’s determination to throw the conventions of its chosen time period out the window at the end so that they could show Alice do that inane (and intentionally rude) little dance and then hop a freighter to go exploring for a wealthy entrepreneur simply smacked of misguided pandering and a disrespect for working within their chosen Victorian setting, not of anything I would remotely consider “female empowerment.” But then, of course, despite the title, this was never really Carroll’s “Alice in Wonderland”; it was just another “Alice in Hollywoodland” and it embraced the “new” Hollywood clichés at every turn. Woolverton wrote a lovely script for Disney’s “Beauty and the Beast” and managed to make Belle a great role model without distorting the piece. But in my view, she completely missed the boat (as it were) with “Alice.”
The Alice we see at the beginning of the film–who rejects cultural norms and societal structures–is subsumed at the end of the film by a moralizing entrepreneur who appears to have no interests beyond her own pleasure and success. Alice transforms from a courageous and imaginative young woman to an insipid one. David Beckham Aftershave