Alice In Wonderland - The Film

Since I had been in Alice in Wonderland kind of mood for the last week or so anyway, I decided on Saturday that I might as well get the DVD and watch the Disney-Tim Burton-Johnny Depp version of it.

A Short Review:

It is not really the Alice in Wonderland we know from the book (i.e. if you’ve actually ever read it).  But that’s okay (and I’d say it’s especially okay if you’ve actually just recently reread the book).

In the book Alice keeps questioning whether she is the same person as she was.

Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I?

In the film, the Wonderland/ Underland creatures also keep questioning whether she is the “right” Alice. Just as in the book, she keeps shrinking and growing, and it takes some trials to find her right size. Both physically and in other respects. The Mad Hatter says to her:

“You’re not the same as you were before. You were much more muchier. You’ve lost your muchness.” 

So of course, before we get to the end, Alice must regain that muchness, by doing things she had not thought herself capable of. And so she does; but while the ending is on the one hand very predictable (since it is “foretold”), on the other hand it is still not quite traditional.

On the whole, I liked it better than I expected.

Now for the extended Review:

On the whole, I liked it better than I expected.

Actually, I sort of knew that I would, right from the start. Not before I bought it, but from moment I started watching.

The setting is made very clear. There is a short scene at the start where little Alice tells her father about having had a strange dream. Then suddenly Alice is 19 years old and obviously feeling very much trapped in the social conventions and expectations of her time (18th century Victorian setting). She is confronted with a choice, flees from it by following the rabbit, falls down the hole… and finds herself back in the dream from her childhood, where things are the same and yet different.

The characters in story are picked from both Alice books (the second entitled Through The Looking Glass). Some of them are also sort of mixed up with each other (like the Queen of Hearts from the first book and the Red Queen from the second). Since I have not reread the second book as recently as the first one, my memories of that one are less clear.

Anyway, I found this to be rather okay too, because the context of it all being a dream – a fiction of Alice’s own imagination – is being kept throughout.

At a critical moment, Alice says:

“From the moment I fell down that rabbit hole, I’ve been told what I must do and who I must be. I’ve been shrunk, stretched, scratched and stuffed into a teapot. I’ve been accused of being Alice, and of not being Alice. But this is my dream. I’ll decide where it goes from here. I make the path.”

Now, if you’re in the mood to be critical, there are of course a few such points you could make as well.

For one thing, you might say it is a bit too much obviously Disney (displayed in faithful dogs and fairy tale castles and whatnot).

 

For another, you might also say it is a bit too much Tim Burton + Johnny Depp. Some review I read on the internet said for example that there is too little difference between Johnny Depp as Willy Wonka and Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter. And there is something in that.

Yes. I think I’d say the Mad Hatter is Depps’s Willy Wonka with Depp’s Scottish accent of J.M. Barrie (from Finding Neverland, about the author of Peter Pan) and Depp’s walk from Benny and Joon (where his character imitates Buster Keaton). In short: It’s Johnny Depp… But that also means there is some depth to the character. (For one thing, we get to see the Hatter actually making hats.)

A third point of criticism might be that the story is a bit too much 21st century special effects dragon-slaying adventure. But – the ingredients are there in Carroll’s books, even if the film has made much of what was little in the books, and the other way round.

Some critics might find it a distortion of the story to have a 19 year old Alice. I think it works rather well, seen in relation to all the shrinking and growing and searching for identity. I must also say that I was very impressed with Mia Wasikowska’s performance as Alice.

 

The Red Queen is played by Helena Bonham Carter, not really easily recognizable with heavy makeup and some considerable digital distortion of her head. But good acting really makes the character.

 

 

 

 

Anne Hathaway’s portrayal of the White Queen is also interesting. She’s supposed to be the good one, but there is some darkness in her as well. 

 

 

 

All in all, I enjoyed it. Maybe one has to be a little bit mad to do so. But as Alice’s father said to her, and she in turn to the Mad Hatter: “All the best people are”…

Quotation of the Week (32/2010)

“…`Be what you would seem to be' -- or if you'd like it put more simply -- Never imagine yourself not to be otherwise than what it might appear to others that what you were or might have been was not otherwise than what you had been would have appeared to them to be otherwise.'"

   "I think I should understand that better," Alice said very politely, "if I had it written down: but I'm afraid I can't quite follow it as you say it."

   "That's nothing to what I could say if I chose," the Duchess replied, in a pleased tone.

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter 9

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Since I spent so much time in Wonderland last week, I just had to pick my Quotation of the Week from it, too!

I’ve now watched the film as well (on DVD) but I think I’ll get back to that in a separate post.

Advent In August

You may have heard of “Christmas in July” (celebrated sometimes in the southern hemisphere, where July is the coldest month), but what about Advent in August?

I usually buy Hippeastrum (Amaryllis) plants or bulbs for Advent and Christmas, but throw the bulbs out after the holidays when the flowers are gone and the leaves start looking sad. I’ve tried some time in the past to get them to flower again but never succeeded.

Mum however used to keep hers sometimes. After she died last spring, most of the plants in the house died, since dad never remembered to water them, and the home care staff did not make that a priority either. I gradually replaced most of the living plants with fake ones just to keep up an illusion of greenery. (Since I was not there often enough to water them, either.)

Two Hippeastrum bulbs somehow managed to keep themselves alive, though. I’ve been on the verge of throwing them out, several times… But have ended up leaving them.

Apparently being watered only once a month or so over the past year has suited them just fine!

When I was at the house about 1½ week after dad had gone into hospital in July, both the bulbs had fresh green leaves.

Another 1½ week later when my aunt and uncle and I stopped by, one of the bulbs had a flower bud coming! So I took that one home with me.

Now every time I enter my kitchen, it looks like Christmas. And odd feeling, since it is summer outside! 

 

The Long Road (Wonderland II)

♫ Gee but it's great to be back home,
Home is where I want to be.
I've been on the road so long my friend,
And if you came along
I know you couldn't disagree. ♫
---
♫ And I'm sooo tired,
I'm oh oh oh so tired… ♫
---
Paul Simon, Keep the Customer Satisfied

There really is a Paul Simon quote for every occasion.
Well, at least if you twist it just a little bit out of context ;) …

---

No, this is not where I live. And I’m grateful.

I decided to take a walk through this residential area after having been to visit my dad in the short-stay nursing home where he has now spent a month. (A month?!) (The nursing home is not quite in this area either, but close to it.)

It was probably almost 20 years since I last walked this way. Back then, I had friends living there. I realized as I walked there now that I had forgotten quite how large that whole suburb part of town really is. And how much everything looks alike. (From the main road passing by one really does not see half of it.)

 
Suburb watercolour painting by Lars Lerin

The long walk, however, is not really why I felt “oh oh oh so tired” when I got back. (I did not walk the whole way home, I took the bus part of the way.)

The reason I was at the nursing home was a meeting with a lot of people to discuss the future living arrangements for my dad. The lot of people included at least three from the nursing home + the municipality assistance evaluator + district nurse + me + dad.

All very nice people, I’m sure, but considering that dad sort of lives in his own Wonderland these days (i.e. a place where normal rules do not quite apply) I was not sure how he might react to the idea of not returning home to live but being sent somewhere else.

I’m still not sure. He did not protest but I’m also not really sure how much of it he took in.

The result of the meeting was that he will remain at the short-stay place for another month. In September there will hopefully be a place at a nursing home unit for elderly people with dementia in the village where he grew up and then also lived the past 18 years.

There is one Crux though. For mysterious reasons there still seems to be a lack of formal “evidence” that he in fact suffers from dementia. (Without which he cannot be offered a place at that unit.) Even though everyone in that room knew it to be so, they said there was no official record of where the diagnosis came from. (Although I do know where it comes from, and I’ve told a lot of people that along the way.)

It also seems no one during all this time has thought of doing a certain test that is commonly used to prove it (MMSE = mini mental state examination – I know the gist of it since the years I worked as a medical secretary). Apparently this test has to be done by a specialist nurse to be valid. And the specialist nurse is (of course) on vacation just now. So they’ll try to find another specialist nurse to do it as soon as possible.

 

In the meantime, while the evaluator asked dad questions like if he himself thought that he would be able to go back home to live – and dad answered that he’d like to think that he could… (actually with sort of a glimpse of his old self shining through in a bit of irony) … I decided to instead ask him (in the presence of the whole lot of people) if he could tell them where exactly it was that he had been living before he had to go into the hospital five weeks ago? He could not. He named a completely different village where he has never lived. (And he does not remember the going into hospital part either.)

It really is “oh oh oh” so difficult to try and understand which paths he’s walking in his mind.

Earlier, before the whole lot of people arrived, he asked me if I had any contact with --- these days. A name I did not recognize at all. When I did not understand, he added: “You know. Your mum.” (The name he mentioned started with the same initial as mum’s, but that’s all.) And then, with sudden hesitation: “Or is she still alive…”

And I had to tell him again, that no… So sorry, but mum died last year. Also tried to remind him of the fact that it was he himself who used his security alarm to call for help when she had a stroke one evening at home, but that she died shortly after arriving in hospital. I guess to him… having a very fuzzy memory indeed now of the past few years… it must seem that she just sort of disappeared… Perhaps gradually. Like the Chesire cat.

That, and more, is why I felt ”sooo tired - oh oh oh so tired” - when I got back home to my own home (which luckily does not feel as gloomy to me as that residential area in pictures above).

Before I allowed myself to lie down and rest, though, I decided to dig through a pile of papers in search of one I knew must be there, somewhere... I found it. The Evidence. A copy of dad’s release form from two weeks evaluation at the Neurology ward two years ago. It clearly states one of his diagnoses back then to be beginning vascular dementia. (What was beginning then, has grown since.) I phoned the district nurse, and I’m sending her a copy of it.

♦ ♣ ♥ ♠

"What do you know about this business?" the King said to Alice.

"Nothing," said Alice.

"Nothing whatever?" persisted the King.

"Nothing whatever," said Alice.

"That's very important," the King said, turning to the jury. They were just beginning to write this down on their slates, when the White Rabbit interrupted: "Unimportant, your Majesty means, of course," he said in a very respectful tone, but frowning and making faces at him as he spoke.

"Unimportant, of course, I meant," the King hastily said, and went on to himself in an undertone, "important -- unimportant -- important -- -" as if he were trying which word sounded best.

Some of the jury wrote it down "important," and some "unimportant." Alice could see this, as she was near enough to look over their slates; "but doesn't matter a bit," she thought to herself.

At this moment the King, who had been for some time busily writing in his note-book, called out "Silence!" and read out from his book, "Rule Forty-two. All persons more than a mile high to leave the court."

Everybody looked at Alice.

Alice in Wonderland Ch 12 – Alice's Evidence

In Wonderland

 
A labyrinth

In Sweden we have a popular Summer radio program which has been broadcasted daily between mid June and mid August for over 50 years (since 1959); each day with a new host, who gets to talk about just about anything - usually based on their own life - and pick the music themselves. Not unlike blogging, actually…The hosts can be more or less well known authors, journalists, politicians, scientists, actors, athletes, businessmen - whatever.

This summer I have not been listening very frequently, but the other day I happened to listen to a culture journalist and critic, I forget her name but she was of Finnish-Swedish origin and had studied at Oxford University, England.

A hole

A theme she kept getting back to was Alice in Wonderland; following the white rabbit (intuition), and falling from one world into another, where the perspective is completely different and other rules apply than the ones you've previously been used to. She compared this not only to her time at Oxford, but for example also to her teenage experience of a church camp, or (a bit later in life) taking part in a game of live action role-playing.

All part of learning to look at things from different perspectives.

Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in the movie I’ve not seen yet

She also touched on the aspect - and in my own mind this was one of the things I kept pondering about afterwards - how falling down the rabbit-hole can also be used as an image of falling into depression; suddenly finding yourself in a world where nothing makes sense and everything gets twisted out of proportion. The first thing that happens to Alice in Wonderland is that she finds herself shrinking one minute, and taking on giant proportions the next; while (or perhaps because?) all the normal points of reference are suddenly just not there any more.

  

"Dear, dear! How queer everything is to-day! And yesterday things went on just as usual. I wonder if I've been changed in the night? Let me think: was I the same when I got up this morning? I almost think I can remember feeling a little different. But if I'm not the same, the next question is, Who in the world am I? Ah, that's the great puzzle!"
– Alice in Wonderland Ch 2 -

I can’t recall when I first read the book, if in my childhood or later on in my teens. Either way, I’m left with a vague impression that back then I just found it a lot of nonsense. Re-reading it now as a grown-up, in English, I find it making more “sense” with every reading… Hm!

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Scroll down to the previous post for this week’s
Booking-Through-Thursday Question.

BTT: First Love

 
http://btt2.wordpress.com/2010/08/05/first-time/

What is the first book you remember reading?
What about the first that made you really love reading?

I think with me learning to read was a gradual process rather than a sudden experience. Actually there was a very similar BTT question a few months ago. Here is the answer I gave to that one.  Before I could read myself, my mum used to read to me. I'm not sure when she ceased to do that, either. My brother is some years younger than me. By the time he was old enough to listen to proper stories, I would have been old enough to read my own. (Probably read to him, too, sometimes.)

I can't say there was one particular book or author that made me love reading either. There were a few that I loved enough to still have them on my shelves, though. Among those, The Borrowers by Mary Norton (the first four books). I reread them as late as last year, for the first time in English (and including a fifth, later book that I did not know of). If you like, read the review that I wrote here back in December 2009.

Swedish cover of
the first Borrowers book.
Illustrations by Ilon Wikland.

Computer Resurrection

Four months ago, after getting my new laptop (which I’m glad to say still works just fine), I ventured an over-optimistic experiment with my old (W.Vista) one. I tried to install an extra keyboard on it, with the disastrous result that it suddenly refused commands from any keyboard. I could not even type in the password. It was a complete deadlock situation - with Windows. Fortunately, though, I also had the alternative system Ubuntu installed on it. And Ubuntu had no problems with the keyboard. So I’ve still been able to use it for some emailing and blog reading.

On and off it has kept bugging me though that I’ve not been able to access Windows on it since that is where I had most documents etc stored.

Yesterday I got it into my head again to give it another go and see if I could fix it somehow. And I did, but I don’t know how!

The manual only had a few lines of cryptic info about how to restore the system “without recovery CDs” which seemed to mean losing everything I had added and changed since I bought it. Nothing about how to restore things with  back-up discs that I actually had.

In a stroke of desperation though, I put one of my last back-up discs into the computer anyway, before pressing the start button. Then the machine told me that for unknown reason it couldn’t start but asked me if I wanted it to search for what was wrong? I said yes please (which I could do with a mouseclick, didn’t have to use the keyboard).

It rattled on for a bit, and then there was the log-in box – and suddenly it did allow me to type in the keyword! After that, all was back to normal. Obviously the problem was fixed. I don’t think it had anything to do with the files on that back-up disc. I could probably just as well have put any old CD in. (?)

I’m not risking more trouble by trying that old keyboard again, though. So I’ve decided to invest in another wireless one instead (not to have to keep moving the one I already have between the two computers).

Another piece of good news on the computer front is that I also got my documents and photos and music from the crashed XP desktop back recently. My brother managed to salvage them and put them on an external hard drive for me.