Jan
Svankmajer's Alice
(1988/First Run Features U.S. Blu-ray)
Picture:
B+ Sound: B+ Extras: D Film: B+
You
have never seen the story of Alice in Wonderland quite like this.
This film is dark, disturbing, and masterfully made using practical
effects and stop motion animation. It is a free adaptation of Lewis
Carroll's first Alice book - Alice's
Adventures in Wonderland,
which was written in 1865.
After
more than two decades as a prolific director of short films, Alice
(1988) became Å vankmajer's first venture into feature length films.
The director had been disappointed by other adaptations of Carroll's
book, including the infamous Walt Disney version, which interpreted
it more as a fairy tale. His aim was instead to make the story play
out like an amoral dream. The film won the feature film award at the
1989 Annecy International Animated Film Festival and with good
reason!
Alice
appears to be in her own bedroom, when a taxidermically stuffed
rabbit comes to life and breaks out of its glass case. Alice follows
the rabbit through the drawer of a desk into a cavern. She
subsequently falls through a bucket and seemingly down an elevator
shaft. Wonderland itself is a mix of drab household-like areas with
incongruous relationships of space and size. The Queen's execution
sentences are carried out by the White Rabbit with a pair of
scissors. At the film's end, Alice wakes in her room, discovers that
the rabbit is still missing from his glass case, and finds a secret
compartment where he keeps scissors. She ponders whether or not she
will cut his head off. The film is ambiguous about whether this room
is Alice's real world or Wonderland.
Remind you a little bit of Zack Snyder's Sucker
Punch?
The
1080p 16X9 transfer is beautifully restored in this release along
with its lossy Dolby Digital 5.1 track. Unfortunately, there aren't
any extras unlike the BFI U.K. Blu-ray, which is Region Free and you
can read more about at this link:
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/11063/Jan+Svankmajer's+Alice+(1988/BFI
Sounds
like the same great transfer, though the sound is PCM instead.
If
you are a fan of the original story or a fan of bizarre animation,
then you definitely want to check this film out. It is definitely an
original vision on the subject and is a far cry from the Tim Burton
version and definitely stands on its own as a cinema classic.
-
James Harland Lockhart V
www.vimeo.com/jamielockhart
