Now that the craze for Burton's Alice coming soon to a theater near you is gathering more force than one can escape, I will share with you all what I think. I think Burton is a great guy, finny, imaginative, and undoubtedly talented in his own special way. Just because I personally don't care a tiny bit for any of his movies, does not mean they are bad or tasteless, or over-the-top, or based on predictable and repetitive algorithms, shrill voices, sudden close-ups and twisted camera angles, a formulaic color palette of blacks, grays, and really bright colors shining through the thick and mysterious smoke. But why does he need to start fucking with Alice? Alice In Wonderland is a book that belongs to a very sacred and exclusive family of books that do not need to made into movies. Master and Margarita is a book like that, Catcher In The Rye, and many others I don't feel like listing here. As far as Alice, I am even pretty adamant that it should not be illustrated by anyone other than Sir. John Tenniel who did the original illustrations approved by Carroll, based on Carroll's own sketches. The pictures and the text go together in a kind of symbiotic way that makes it obvious to anyone with half a brain that if you are going to illustrate, no matter how good you are, find something else to do. You can spend years making the most gorgeous illustrations for Alice, and in ten years no one is going to care, because they will be an extra set, and they will not be needed, re-printed, or looked at. This upcoming movie, judging from the trailer, is kind of like that: a shiny illustration to the "best bits of Alice taken out of context and inserted into a stupid Disney movie". The movie takes place some years after the actual story (which means that none of Carroll's structure or logic of the book is maintained or adhered to, and even worse, it seems like a completely banal conflict of good vs. evil is the central force of the movie with some direct quotes stolen from the book and strategically scattered through the different characters in Disneyfied attire to keep the interest of the viewers enough from falling asleep, or, going mad.
The magic of Carroll's Wonderland of conveyed through the words of the book, not through the wild and crazy, or zany or loud, or exuberant or polished. The wit and wisdom of the book is quiet, it takes a while to settle, it moves in different directions, it needs time to make itself comfortable in one's imagination. If Burton wants to make a zany movie with wacky characters it doesn't matter where he sets his movie, or what the movie is about, or what it is based on, because all loyal Burton fans will go see it anyway, and get a kick out of it, but the poor Mad Hatter will not be raped in twenty different ways to conform to the twists of the movie plot and the Red Queen can wish people's heads off in her own special way, not in aging and heavily made-up Helena Bonham Carter way, with all due respect.
Now of course you can ask me why don't I feel this way about the Russian record of Alice which I, like all the other kids who grew up on it, adore and still listen to regularly, more even than in my childhood. Yes, you could say that Vysotsky can be compared to Burton, that his songs add an alien feature to the story, that all the moralizing and subliminal political commentary has no place in the story - but I would disagree. I think the Russian record, other than being extremely true to the plot and meaning of the original even though it is in a different language, is extraordinarily respectful of Carroll and of his book. It is completely non-pretentious, it is appropriately subtle, and it was made in a place and at a time when it was an outlet for professionally repressed geniuses who understood, lived, and conveyed the original work, not, as in Burton's case, made it into a vehicle for his own special creative (dare I say commercial?) agenda.
One other movie based on Alice, is of course, Jan Svankmajer's Alice. I really can't say that is is a movie I would watch very often, though it had a definite effect on me the first time I saw it. In general I think Svankmajer would have been better off sticking to original pieces rather than illustrating other people's work, but I am not very angry at him over Alice. I consider it a "response" to the book, rather than a way to use the book for his own commercial benefit, though clearly he uses it for his own creative benefit, which I am not too happy about. But like Carroll and Vysotsky, and unlike Burton, Svankmajer is an artist, who, in my opinion operates within a different creative realm. But it was he who benefited from using Alice as a basis for his movie, not Alice who benefited from having yet another movie made about her.
I believe that the effects on the book Alice in Wonderland will be devastating following the release of Burton's movie. For people who are lovers of Carroll and the book, it will put big stain on their relationship of the book because they will be surrounded by people who have seen the movie and thus presume to know something about teh original story. For People who will be introduced to the book for the first time through this movie, the book will be represented in a completely misguided and vandalized way, and if some people do decide to buy and read the book they will not be attuned and sensitive to the subtle complexities of the humor and the plot, but will look for the quotes of sentences that were stolen for the movie. In any case, I think the whole idea is a disaster, and I hope that it flops terribly.
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