Alice Through the Looking Glass

In 1871, A deacon logician at Oxford published a sequel to his surprisingly popular children's story. In that original, he had dabbled in the mix of logic and mysticism that he thought respectable. Fortunately for him, it was characterized as the sort of nonsense genre created by Edward Lear. But he was deeply disturbed in the years that followed as the Church and what came to be called spiritualism diverged. So to make amends to his God, and to deflate the Kabbalistic origin of the first work, he formulated something with much the same structure and tone, but without the magic.

This work was based on conundrums created by the symmetries in the world. It became as popular as the first. His later works tried harder to distance himself from divination and became tepid Christian allegories. "Through the Looking-glass" was so successful that it and the original Alice are often merged as if they were seamless. The symmetries in the later work are easier to quote, so the looking-glass symbology and structure is re-used and quoted far more than the dangerous and slippery original Alice.

In 1979, auteur Raoul Ruiz made "The Hypothesis of the Stolen Painting," a remarkable film, using the Alice structure as a template for narrative folding and a painting as the conflation of both book and mirror.

Based on this, cinematic novelist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, wrote a rather complex and ambitious novel. "The Flanders Panel" published in 1990.

In 1994, filmmaker Jim McBride continued on of his two film careers, the one where he starts with extremely ambitious material, making a mainstream film based on Pérez-Reverte's novel. While the novel was inherently cinematic, McBride added an extra dimension: the folds of inner narrative, of dreams and fantasies were mapped onto the body of the on screen detective, with insight conflated with nudity. To accomplish this insofar as he could, he found a quite beautiful and intuitively talented young actress. Like Nastassja Kinski and Asia Argento before her, she grew up in an acting family and genuinely knew how to map narrative on her body, unafraid to be as sexually complex as possible. Together, Kate Beckinsale and McBride made an interesting if not profoundly successful film.

Like Kinski and Jovovich, Beckinsale would go on to make films directed by lovers, films that would shamelessly exploit this talent. But in between her First Alice and her leathered vampire phase, she was Alice in a literal film version of the book. Well, it is not quite literal in that we have to explain why a redheaded sexual being is in this looking-glass world, and plot accommodations are made based on the Pérez-Reverte model.

This film is a disaster, an utter disaster if you take it as it comes. It has none of the magic of the book, though the language and images are used exactly. It has none of engagement that other experiments have with whatever mix of mystery and sex they use. And though it experiments with cinematic inner visions, the devices used are from Terry Gilliam and all utterly fail.

But if you see it in this greater context of Kate's mother, the Lewis Carroll cover-up and deliberately obfuscated magic; if you see it as overtly sexual but with the sex completely hidden: homeopathic seduction, then it works amazingly well. Alice as a redhead!

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

I only had a passing familiarity with the works of Lewis Carroll, (I had a children's book of Alice in Wonderland and gave a reading of Jabberwocky for my tenth grade English class) so I couldn't comment very authoritatively on the literary significance of this movie. I can say I thought some of the readings were very good...Humpty-Dumpty and the White Knight for instance. But I especially liked Kate Beckinsale's performance. She is very beautiful and talented, and by herself would make the picture worth watching.

Clear yet subtle, funny and sophisticated in its apparent simplicity: an excellent rendition of Carroll's own quirky humor, and vastly entertaining. A fine cast, appropriate staging, and a literary pace combine to make this an outstanding film. Would that it were available on DVD!

This is the best film version of the Lewis Carroll story that I've seen. Other versions usually employ comedians as actors and their performances are always way over-the-top. This version is really amusing because the dialogs are so deadpan serious. Sort of Pythonesque. I think that is how Lewis Carroll intended it to be done; that is how I read the books. I love the dialog between Alice (Kate Beckinsale) and the White Knight (Ian Holm). They are both so intense and sincere about discussing such very silly topics and that is what makes it so amusing. Kate's reactions to many of the inane things that happen is so subdued. It's perfect.

Both Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass are classics, rich in atmosphere and with colourful characters. Admittedly they are episodic but in a way that is part of the books' charm. Both are also difficult to adapt because of the structure, the atmosphere and Carroll's way of words, especially Through the Looking Glass where the structure is even more nonsensical and the characters even kookier. This adaptation is a valiant effort and it is on the most part the most faithful adaptation of Through the Looking Glass, whether it is the best is up for debate, I remember liking the 1973 BBC adaptation more but that may change on re-watch.

This version is far from perfect, the ending is abrupt, Kate Beckinsale's hair did look too modern and the Walrus and the Carpenter scene felt very badly rushed through, the production values in this scene did look on the amateurish side. While the Wasp with the Wig segment was interesting and well done the adaptation may have made more sense with the Lion and the Unicorn scene intact- it felt like it was meant to be there in the first place but edited out- and the White Knight scene really could have done without the black and white footage which added nothing to the scene. Some of the adaptation especially at the end felt rushed, if they had slowed things down those who had trouble following the story may have understood it a little more. The adaptation does look decent though, very TV-movie-bound, but it is colourful and attractive enough once you get used to Alice's constant clothes changes and Tweedledum and Tweedledee made up to look like characters from A Clockwork Orange.

The photography is nicely done and flows decently into each frame and scene. The music is laden with whimsy, a sense of wonder and subtle edge, very like a fantasy adventure score should sound. The script is very true to Carroll's humour and how he wrote, the sing-song-like poetry and oddball nature are most endearing too. A-Sitting on the Gate stood out in this respect. The story maintains the episodic feel that the book has and also the wonderful weirdness(in a couple of scenes a little too weird admittedly) and whimsical charm. In terms of individual scenes, the melancholic White Knight scene and the really genuinely spooky train sequence stood out. The flower garden scene was colourful also, and the White Queen and Red Queen encounters are nicely done. The jabberwocky is much scarier in the Natalie Gregory adaptation(which I also preferred over this despite some of the songs and casting not quite being there), but it still makes the same impact here. The cast are fine.

Kate Beckinsale is too old- Kate Burton was also too old, around the same age, in the excellent theatre production from 1983 and she actually still worked- but there is still the winsomeness, assertiveness, sense of confusion and simple charm that you'd expect Alice to have. Ian Richardson, Marc Warren and Steve Coogan also give nice contributions, but the standouts were Sian Phillips' menacingly imposing Red Queen, Penelope Wilton as a riotuous White Queen(though much more subtle than the hilariously batty Carol Channing in the Natalie Gregory adaptation) and especially the touching White Knight- the only sympathetic character on Alice's adventures- of Ian Holm. In conclusion, a good if flawed version(though if people dislike it it is easy to see why), Through the Looking Glass is a very difficult book to adapt and this does valiantly with it. 7/10 Bethany Cox